Abstract

It has been known for a while that coherent high-intensity photon number eigenstate fields can be generated through nonlinear optical parametric processes,¹ the same ones that give rise to quadrature squeezing.²,³ In contrast to quadrature squeezing which is essentially a single-mode phenomenon, although it is widely misunderstood that it is a two-mode phenomenon, the generation of single-mode number states through three- or four-wave mixing depends on two separate signal and idler modes that are perfectly correlated in photon numbers, in other words a twin beam. The nature of such twin beams is elucidated in both the Schrodinger and the Heisenberg pictures. In particular, it is shown that strong photon number correlation in a twin beam can still be obtained in an amplifier rather than an oscillator configuration, another widely missed point.

© 1991 Optical Society of America