Teaching a laser beam to go straight
Authors:
Hans-A. Bachor a;
Claude Fabre b;
Ping Koy Lam a;
Nicolas Treps b
(Show Biographies)
| Affiliations: | a ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia |
| b Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France |
DOI:
10.1080/00107510500165089
Publication Frequency:
6 issues per year
Subjects:
Astrophysics;
Atomic & Nuclear Physics;
Chemical Physics;
Computational Physics;
Condensed Matter Physics;
Environmental Physics;
Experimental Physics;
General Physics;
Particle & High Energy Physics;
Plasma Physics;
Space Science;
Theoretical Physics;
Formats available:
HTML
(English)
:
PDF
(English)
View Article:
View Article (PDF)
View Article (HTML)
Abstract
In classical physics a beam of light propagates in a perfectly straight line and this means that we can measure small displacements with unlimited accuracy. However, this is not correct for real laser beams when we take the quantum properties of light into account. Spatial measurements will be limited by quantum noise, similar to the limitations for optical communication and sensing. Here we derive the spatial quantum noise limit and show how to measure it. Next we demonstrate that we can use specially prepared light with quantum correlations, so-called squeezed light, to improve spatial measurements to below this quantum limit. In this way we prepare a beam which goes in a straighter line than the output of any conventional laser.
|
| view references (16) |

Download Citation

CiteULike
Del.icio.us
BibSonomy
Connotea