Measuring sub-Planck structural analogues in chronocyclic phase space
File(s)0909.1117v1.pdf (241.25 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Austin, Dane R
Witting, Tobias
Wyatt, Adam S
Walmsley, Ian A
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Phase space quasi-probability distributions of certain quantum states reveal structure on a scale that is small compared to the Planck area. Using an analog between the wavefunction of a single photon and the electric field of a classical ultrashort optical pulse we show that spectral shearing interferometry enables measurement of such structure directly, thereby extending an idea of Krzysztof Wódkiewicz and others. In particular, we use multiple-shear spectral interferometry to fully characterize a pulse consisting of two sub-pulses which are temporally and spectrally disjoint, without a relative-phase ambiguity. This enables us to compute the Wigner distribution of the pulse. This spectrographic representation of the pulse field features fringes that are tilted with respect to both the time- and frequency axes, showing that in general the shortest sub-Planck distances may not be in the directions of the canonical (and easily experimentally accessible) directions. Further, independent of this orientation, evidence of the sub-Planck scale of the structure may be extracted directly from the measured signal.
Date Issued
2010-03
Citation
Opt. Commun., 2010, 283, pp.855-859
ISSN
0030-4018
Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
Start Page
855
End Page
859
Journal / Book Title
Opt. Commun.
Volume
283
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Optics Communications. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS, Vol.:283, Issue:5, (2010) DOI:10.1016/j.optcom.2009.10.060.
Description
26.11.12 KB. Accepted version ok to add to Spiral, Elsevier say ok while mandate is not enforced.
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=000274879400034&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Article Number
5