Experimental polarization state tomography using photon counting polarimeters
Alexander Ling, Kee Pang Soh, Antı́a Lamas-Linares, Christian Kurtsiefer · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2006
We report on the implementation of a photon counting polarimeter based on a scheme known to be optimal for obtaining the polarization vector of ensembles of spin-1/2 quantum systems. We show how to use this polarimeter to estimate the complete polarization state for generic multi-photon states. State reconstruction using the polarimeter is illustrated by actual measurements on prepared ensembles of one- and two-photon systems. The rate at which the estimated polarization state converges to an asymptote state is also measured and presented.