Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 36: Quanteninformation (Konzepte und Methoden II)
Q 36.7: Talk
Thursday, March 13, 2008, 12:30–12:45, 1B
Experimental Demonstration of near-Optimal Discrimination of Optical Coherent States — •Christoffer Wittmann1, Katiuscia N. Cassemiro2, Masahiro Takeoka3, Masahide Sasaki3, Ulrik L. Andersen1, and Gerd Leuchs1 — 1Institut für Optik, Information und Photonik, Max-Planck Forschungsgruppe, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, — 2Instituto de Fìsica, Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 66318, — 3National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 4-2-1 Nukui-kitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan
Optimal discrimination of non-orthogonal quantum states is one of the fundamental tasks in quantum detection theory. For weak coherent states, the standard detection schemes, namely homodyne detection and the Kennedy receiver, are not able to achieve error free sensitivity in principle. Both schemes do not even reach the optimal bound for the minimum average error.
We propose and experimentally realize a novel detection strategy for the discrimination of two optical coherent states. We present the experimental comparison of the new strategy with standard detection schemes and demonstrate, that the new receiver surpasses both standard approaches for any signal amplitude.