Direct Measurement of the Wigner Function of a One-Photon Fock State in a Cavity
Top Cited Papers
- 28 October 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 89 (20) , 200402
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.89.200402
Abstract
We have measured the complete Wigner function of the vacuum and of a single-photon state for a field stored in a high- cavity. This experiment implements the direct Lutterbach and Davidovich method [L. G. Lutterbach and L. Davidovich, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 2547 (1997)] and is based on the dispersive interaction of a single circular Rydberg atom with the cavity field. The nonclassical nature of the single-photon field is exhibited by a region of negative values. Extensions to other nonclassical cavity field states are discussed.
Keywords
This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
- Quantum State Reconstruction of the Single-Photon Fock StatePhysical Review Letters, 2001
- Observing the Progressive Decoherence of the “Meter” in a Quantum MeasurementPhysical Review Letters, 1996
- Quantum Statistics of the Squeezed Vacuum by Measurement of the Density Matrix in the Number State RepresentationPhysical Review Letters, 1996
- A “Schrödinger Cat” Superposition State of an AtomScience, 1996
- Squeezed vacuum from a monolithic optical parametric oscillatorJournal of the Optical Society of America B, 1995
- Measurement of the Wigner distribution and the density matrix of a light mode using optical homodyne tomography: Application to squeezed states and the vacuumPhysical Review Letters, 1993
- Determination of quasiprobability distributions in terms of probability distributions for the rotated quadrature phasePhysical Review A, 1989
- A tomographic approach to Wigner's functionFoundations of Physics, 1987
- Distribution functions in physics: FundamentalsPhysics Reports, 1984
- On the Quantum Correction For Thermodynamic EquilibriumPhysical Review B, 1932