Maximally polarized states for quantum light fields

• The degree of polarization of a quantum field can be defined as its distance to an appropriate set of states. When we take unpolarized states as this reference set, the states optimizing this degree for a fixed average number of photons (N) over bar present a fairly symmetric, parabolic photon statistic, with a variance scaling as (N) over bar (2). Although no standard optical process yields such a statistic, we show that, to an excellent approximation, a highly squeezed vacuum can be taken as maximally polarized. We also consider the distance of a field to the set of its SU(2) transformed, finding that certain linear superpositions of SU(2) coherent states make this degree to be unity.

Nyckelord

polarimetric contrast parameters

hilbert-schmidt distance

unpolarized radiation

entanglement measures

squeezed-light

atomic states

optical waves

information

entropy

fluctuations

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