Research Investigation Directed Toward Extending the Useful Range of the Electromagnetic Spectrum
Abstract
Silent light (also known as photon number-squeezed light and sub- Poisson light) can be generated as recombination radiation from semiconductor materials by using a specially designed space-charge-limited light-emitting structure. Because such light has a photon-number distribution that is narrower than the Poisson distribution, the well-known lightwave-communication 'quantum limit' of 10 photons/bit (for on-off keying) can be improved upon. We have established relationships between the bit error rate Pe and the mean number of photons per bit <N>, and between <N> and the variance-to-mean ratio of the photon number (F), for binomial-distributed silent light. <N> drops rapidly as F decreases, indicating that improved performance may be expected if silent light is used. We have also extended the open-loop fully quantum theory of light detection to include closed-loop operation. It turns out that the unmistakable signatures of nonclassical light associated with open-loop detection, such as sub-Poisson photocounts, do not carry over to closed-loop systems. Such systems can, in general, be useful for generating silent light when photon pairs are available, such as in parametric downconversion.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 31, 1988
- Accession Number
- ADA203340
Entities
People
- George W. Flynn
- Richard M. Osgood, Jr.
Organizations
- Columbia University