Quantum Noise of Kramers-Kronig Receiver

TL;DR

This paper analytically demonstrates that the Kramers-Kronig receiver can reduce quantum noise and improve signal-to-noise ratio in quantum optical measurements by exploiting the relations between signal components, offering enhanced noise reduction over traditional methods.

Contribution

The paper provides an analytical understanding of quantum noise reduction in the Kramers-Kronig receiver, revealing its ability to improve SNR and reduce quantum fluctuations compared to balanced heterodyne detection.

Findings

KK receiver achieves 1.5 times the SNR of heterodyne detection.

Quantum fluctuation in the KK receiver is reduced to 2/3 of direct measurement.

The KK receiver introduces an asymmetric fluctuation distribution depending on phase.

Abstract

The Kramers-Kronig (KK) receiver provides an efficient method to reconstruct the complex-valued optical field by means of intensity detection given a minimum-phase signal. In this paper, we analytically show that for detecting coherent states through measuring the minimum-phase signal, while keeping the radial quantum fluctuation the same as the balanced heterodyne detection does, the KK receiver can indirectly recover the tangential component with fluctuation equivalently reduced to 1/3 times the radial one at the decision time, by adopting the KK relations to utilize the information of the physically measured radial component of other time of the symbol period. In consequence, the KK receiver achieves 3/2 times the signal-to-noise ratio of balanced heterodyne detection, while presenting an asymmetric quantum fluctuation distribution depending on the time-varying phase. Therefore, the KK receiver provides a feasible scheme to reduce the quantum fluctuation for obtaining the selected component to 2/ 3 times that of physically measuring the same component of the coherent state. This work provides a physical insight of the KK receiver and should enrich the knowledge of electromagnetic noise in quantum optical measurement.