Double balanced homodyne detection

Abstract

In the context of the readout scheme for gravitational-wave detectors, the "double balanced homodyne detection" proposed in [K.~Nakamura and M.-K.~Fujimoto, arXiv:1709.01697.] is discussed in detail. This double balanced homodyne detection enables us to measure the expectation values of the photon creation and annihilation operators. Although it has been said that the operator $\hat{b}_{\theta}:=\cos\theta\hat{b}_{1}+\sin\theta\hat{b}_{2}$ can be measured through the homodyne detection in literature, we first show that the expectation value of the operator $\hat{b}_{\theta}$ cannot be measured as the linear combination of the upper- and lower-sidebands from the output of the balanced homodyne detection. Here, the operators $\hat{b}_{1}$ and $\hat{b}_{2}$ are the amplitude and phase quadrature in the two-photon formulation, respectively. On the other hand, it is shown that the above double balanced homodyne detection enables us to measure the expectation value of the operator $\hat{b}_{\theta}$ if we can appropriately prepare the complex amplitude of the coherent state from the local oscillator. It is also shown that the interferometer set up of the eight-port homodyne detection realizes our idea of the double balanced homodyne detection. We also evaluate the noise-spectral density of the gravitational-wave detectors when our double balanced homodyne detection is applied as their readout scheme. Some requirements for the coherent state from the local oscillator to realize the double balanced homodyne detection are also discussed.