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Warwick Bowen

Publications and source records attributed to Warwick Bowen.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Bright Pulsed Squeezed Light for Quantum-Enhanced Precision Microscopy

Squeezed states of light enable enhanced measurement precision by reducing noise below the standard quantum limit. A key application of squeezed light is nonlinear microscopy, where state-of-the-art performance is limited by photodamage and quantum-limited noise. Such microscopes require bright, pulsed light for optimal operation, yet generating and detecting bright pulsed squeezing at high levels remains challenging. In this work, we present an efficient technique to generate high levels of bright picosecond pulsed squeezed light using a $\chi^2$ optical parametric amplification process in a waveguide. We measure $-3.2~\mathrm{dB}$ of bright squeezing with optical power compatible with nonlinear microscopy, as well as $-3.6~\mathrm{dB}$ of vacuum squeezing. Corrected for losses, these squeezing levels correspond to $-15.4^{+2.7}_{-8.7}~\mathrm{dB}$ of squeezing generated in the waveguide. The measured level of bright amplitude pulsed squeezing is to our knowledge the highest reported to date, and will contribute to the broader adoption of quantum-enhanced nonlinear microscopy in biological studies.

quant-ph

Phonon antibunching effect in coupled nonlinear micro/nanomechanical resonator at finite temperature

In this study, we investigate the phonon antibunching effect in a coupled nonlinear micro/nanoelectromechanical system (MEMS/NEMS) resonator at a finite temperature. In the weak driving limit, the optimal condition for phonon antibunching is given by solving the stationary Liouville-von Neumann master equation. We show that at low temperature, the phonon antibunching effect occurs in the regime of weak nonlinearity and mechanical coupling, which is confirmed by analytical and numerical solutions. We also find that thermal noise can degrade or even destroy the antibunching effect for different mechanical coupling strengths. Furthermore, a transition from strong antibunching to bunching for phonon correlation has been observed in the temperature domain. Finally, we find that a suitably strong driving in the finite-temperature case would help to preserve an optimal phonon correlation against thermal noise.

quant-ph

Optimum Small Optical Beam Displacement Measurement

We derive the quantum noise limit for the optical beam displacement of a TEM00 mode. Using a multimodal analysis, we show that the conventional split detection scheme for measuring beam displacement is non-optimal with 80% efficiency. We propose a new displacement measurement scheme that is optimal for small beam displacement. This scheme utilises a homodyne detection setup that has a TEM10 mode local oscillator. We show that although the quantum noise limit to displacement measurement can be surpassed using squeezed light in appropriate spatial modes for both schemes, the TEM10 homodyning scheme out-performs split detection for all values of squeezing.

quant-ph