Optical field-strength generalized polarization of multimode single photon states in integrated directional couplers
Jesús Liñares, David Barral, María C. Nistal, Vicente Moreno · Journal of Modern Optics · 2011
A quantum analysis of the generalized polarization properties of multimode single photon states is presented. It is based on the optical field-strength probability distributions in such a way that generalized polarization is understood as a significant confinement of the probability distribution along certain regions of the multidimensional optical field-strength space. The analysis is addressed to multimode integrated waveguiding devices, such as N × N integrated directional couplers, whose modes fulfil a spatial modal orthogonality relationship. For that purpose a definition of the quantum generalized polarization degree in a N-dimensional space, based on the concept of distance to an unpolarized N-dimensional Gaussian distribution, is proposed. The generalized polarization degree of pure and mixture multimode single photon states and also of some multi-photon states such as coherent and chaotic ones, is evaluated and analyzed.