Quantum fluctuations spatial mode profiler

Abstract

The spatial mode is an essential component of an electromagnetic field description, yet it is challenging to characterize it for optical fields with low average photon number, such as in a squeezed vacuum. We present a method for reconstruction of the spatial modes of such fields based on the homodyne measurements of their quadrature noise variance performed with a set of structured masks. We show theoretically that under certain conditions we can recover individual spatial mode distributions by using the weighted sum of the basis masks, where weights are determined using measured variance values and phases. We apply this approach to analyze the spatial structure of a squeezed vacuum field with various amount of excess thermal noise generated in Rb vapor.