Quantum noise and vacuum fluctuations in balanced homodyne detections through ideal multi-mode detectors

TL;DR

This paper analyzes quantum noise and vacuum fluctuations in balanced homodyne detection for gravitational-wave detectors, clarifying the contributions of vacuum fluctuations from different sources and comparing measurement models.

Contribution

It provides a quantum field theoretical analysis of measurement models in homodyne detection, clarifies vacuum fluctuation contributions, and shows their negligible impact in realistic scenarios.

Findings

Both measurement models yield the same expectation value.

Vacuum fluctuations from the local oscillator are negligible in realistic conditions.

The conventional noise spectral density includes vacuum fluctuations from the main interferometer only.

Abstract

The balanced homodyne detection as a readout scheme of gravitational-wave detectors is carefully examined from the quantum field theoretical point of view. The readout scheme in gravitational-wave detectors specifies the directly measured quantum operator in the detection. This specification is necessary when we apply the recently developed quantum measurement theory to gravitational-wave detections. We examine the two models of measurement. One is the model in which the directly measured quantum operator at the photodetector is Glauber's photon number operator, and the other is the model in which the power operator of the optical field is directly measured. These two are regarded as ideal models of photodetectors. We first show these two models yield the same expectation value of the measurement. Since it is consensus in the gravitational-wave community that vacuum fluctuations contribute to the noises in the detectors, we also clarify the contributions of vacuum fluctuations to the quantum noise spectral density without using the two-photon formulation which is used in the gravitational-wave community. We found that the conventional noise spectral density in the two-photon formulation includes vacuum fluctuations from the main interferometer but does not include those from the local oscillator. Although the contribution of vacuum fluctuations from the local oscillator theoretically yields the difference between the above two models in the noise spectral densities, this difference is negligible in realistic situations.