Heralding on the Detection of Zero Photons

Abstract

Although heralding signals in quantum optics experiments are typically based on the detection of exactly one photon, it has recently been theoretically shown that heralding based on the detection of zero photons can be useful in a number of quantum information applications. Here we describe an experimental technique for "heralding on zero photons" using conventional single-photon detectors and time-tagging methods. We find that detector efficiency and dark count rates play a counterintuitive role in the ability to accurately detect zero photons, and demonstrate these effects in an experiment that involves heralding on zero photons in the well-known Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer.

9 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Heralded noiseless amplification and attenuation of non-gaussian states of light
• Photon arrival time tagging with many channels, sub-nanosecond deadtime, very high throughput, and fiber optic remote synchronization
• Noiseless attenuation using an optical parametric amplifier
• Work and information from thermal states after subtraction of energy quanta
• Effect of the heralding detector properties on the conditional generation of single-photon states