Experimental quantum tomography of a homodyne detector

Abstract

We suggest and demonstrate a tomographic method to characterise homodyne detectors at the quantum level. The positive operator measure associated with the detector is expanded in a quadrature basis and probed with a set of coherent states. The coefficients of the expansion are then retrieved using a least squares algorithm. Our model is general enough to describe different implementations of the homodyne setup, and it has proven capable of effectively describing the detector response to different tomographic sets. We validate the reconstructed operator measure on nonclassical states and exploit results to estimate the overall quantum efficiency of the detector.

Keywords

• quantum detector tomography
• homodyne detector
• quantum states of light
• 03.65.Wj
• 42.50.Dv
• 03.65.Ta