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Quantum Physics, quant-ph
Abstract:
The standard process for the production of strongly squeezed states of light
is optical parametric amplification (OPA) below threshold in dielectric media
such as LiNbO3 or periodically poled KTP. Here, we present a graphical
description of squeezed light generation via OPA. It visualizes the interaction
between the nonlinear dielectric polarization of the medium and the
electromagnetic quantum field. We explicitly focus on the transfer from the
field's ground state to a squeezed vacuum state and from a coherent state to a
bright squeezed state by the medium's secondorder nonlinearity, respectively.
Our pictures visualize the phase dependent amplification and deamplification of
quantum uncertainties and give the phase relations between all propagating
electro-magnetic fields as well as the internally induced dielectric
polarizations. The graphical description can also be used to describe the
generation of nonclassical states of light via higherorder effects of the
non-linear dielectric polarization such as four-wave mixing and the optical
Kerr effect.
