Optical time-domain quantum state tomography on a subcycle scale

Abstract

Following recent progress in the experimental application of electro-optic sampling to the detection of the quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic-field ground state and ultrabroadband squeezed states on a subcycle scale, we propose an approach to elevate broadband electro-optic sampling from a spectroscopic method to a full quantum tomography scheme, able to reconstruct a broadband quantum state directly in the time-domain. By combining two recently developed methods to theoretically describe quantum electro-optic sampling, we analytically relate the photon-count probability distribution of the electro-optic signal to a transformed phase-space quasiprobability distribution of the sampled quantum state as a function of the time delay between the sampled mid-infrared pulsed state and an ultrabroadband near-infrared pump/probe pulse. We catalog and analyze sources of noise and show that in quantum electro-optic sampling with an ultrabroadband pump pulse one can expect to observe thermalization due to entanglement breaking. Mitigation of the thermalization noise enables a tomographic reconstruction of broadband quantum states while granting access to its dynamics on a subcycle scale.