Abstract
The subtraction or addition of a prescribed number of photons to a field mode does not, in general, simply shift the probability distribution by the number of subtracted or added photons. Subtraction of a photon from an initial coherent state, for example, leaves the photon statistics unchanged and the same process applied to an initial thermal state increases the mean photon number. We present a detailed analysis of the effects of the initial photon statistics on those of the state from which the photons have been subtracted or to which they have been added. Our approach is based on two closely related moment-generating functions, one that is well established and one that we introduce.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 013809 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Physical Review A |
| Volume | 98 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 5 Jul 2018 |
Funding
We thank Bob Boyd for rekindling our interest in this topic, Adrian Bowman for helpful advice on ascending factorials, Tom Douce for assistance with continuous variable quantum computing, and Bill Phillips for suggesting the example of subtracting a photon from an initial mixture of the vacuum and the ten photon states. This work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, under Grants No. EP/R008264/1 and No. EP/P015719/1, and by a Royal Society Research Professorship, Grant No. RP150122. APPENDIX A:
Keywords
- photon addition
- photon subtraction
- radiation fields