Experimental study of balanced optical homodyne and heterodyne detection by controlling sideband modulation  

作　　者：LI Wei YU XuDong MENG ZengMing JIN YuanBin ZHANG Jing 

机构地区：[1]State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics and Quantum Optics Devices, Institute of Opto-Electronics,Shanxi University [2]Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China

出　　处：《Science China(Physics,Mechanics & Astronomy)》2015年第10期23-27,共5页中国科学：物理学、力学、天文学（英文版）

基　　金：supported by the National Basic Research Program of China(Grant No.2011CB921601);the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.10725416 and 60821004)

摘　　要：We experimentally study optical homodyne and heterodyne detections with the same setup, which is flexible to manipulate the signal sideband modulation. When the modulation only generates a single signal sideband, the light field measurement by mixing the single sideband at ω0 ±? with a strong local oscillator at the carrier frequency ω0on a beam splitter becomes balanced heterodyne detection. When two signal sidebands at ω0 ±? are generated and the relative phase of the two sidebands is locked, this measurement corresponds to optical balanced homodyne detection. With this setup, we may confirm directly that the signal-to-noise ratio with heterodyne detection is two-fold worse than that with homodyne detection. This work will have important applications in quantum state measurement and quantum information.We experimentally study optical homodyne and heterodyne detections with the same setup, which is flexible to manipulate the signal sideband modulation. When the modulation only generates a single signal sideband, the light field measurement by mixing the single sideband at ω0 ±Ω with a strong local oscillator at the carrier frequency ω0 on a beam splitter becomes balanced heterodyne detection. When two signal sidebands at ω0 ±Ω are generated and the relative phase of the two sidebands is locked, this measurement corresponds to optical balanced homodyne detection. With this setup, we may confirm directly that the signal-to-noise ratio with heterodyne detection is two-fold worse than that with homodyne detection. This work will have important applications in quantum state measurement and quantum information.

关 键 词：homodyne detection heterodyne detection sideband modulation the signal-to-noise ratio 

分 类 号：TN761[电子电信—电路与系统]