Squeezed-Light Generation in Optical Waveguides

Abstract

Within the past few years, squeezed states of light have been generated in a number of distinct physical systems [1]. All of them can be categorized into the following two groups: i) those exploiting the resonant nonlinear interaction of light with two-level atoms and ii) those involving the nonresonant nonlinearity of the interaction of high-intensity light with transparent media. The experiments in the first group have included intracavity four-wave mixing in an atomic beam [2], forward four-wave mixing in a Doppler-broadened gaseous medium [3], and the strong interaction of a small-volume high-finesse optical cavity with a beam of two-level atoms [4]. The experiments in the second group, namely forward four-wave mixing in a single-mode optical fiber [5] and intracavity parametric down-conversion in a nonlinear crystal [6], have been more interesting from an applications point of view and indeed the latter has emerged to be a prototypical system for the generation of squeezed light. Over 60% squeezing has been measured in light emitted by a cavity containing the MgO:LiNbO₃ down-converter [6].

Supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EET-8715275.