Experimental quantum tomography of a homodyne detector

Abstract

We suggest and demonstrate a tomographic method to fully characterize homodyne detectors at the quantum level. The operator measure associated with the detector is expanded in the quadrature basis and probed with a set of coherent states. The coefficients of the expansion are retrieved using a least squares algorithm. We then validate the reconstructed operator measure on nonclassical states. Finally, we exploit results to estimate the overall quantum efficiency of the detector.