Abstract

Polarization squeezing [1] is attracting much attention in the last few years because of its potential applications in quantum information. We reconsider here the analysis of quantum fluctuations in dispersive optical bistability by generalizing the standard model in order to take into account fluctuations in the two orthogonal polarization components of the intracavity field, and not only in the pumped one as it is customary. In other words, we consider a relatively simple model for a vectorial Kerr cavity: The Kerr nonlinearity is the responsible for dispersive bistability, and two extra nonlinear terms, describing cross-phase modulation and four-wave mixing, couple the intense (pumped) intracavity field (with polarization parallel to that of the field injected in the cavity) with the orthogonally polarized mode. The weight of the new nonlinearities is controlled by the Maker-Terhune coefficients, which verily A + B!2 = 1 for an isotropic material, which we consider. This system exhibits a very rich variety of bifurcations [2], In this communication we describe the simplest results.

© 2007 IEEE