Overcoming Vacuum Noise: The Unforeseen Benefits of Quantum Heterodyne Detection
C. R. Müller, Christian Peuntinger, Thomas Dirmeier, Imran Khan, Ulrich Vogl, Christoph W. Marquardt, Gerd Leuchs, Luis Lorenzo Sánchez-Soto, Yong Siah Teo, Z. Hradil, Jaroslav Řeháček · 2016
Homodyne tomography and heterodyne detection are principal measurement schemes in continuous-variable quantum information and provide different accuracies in determining the quantum state of a system. The former allows for a tomographic reconstruction of the Wigner function of the state, whereas the latter directly samples its Husimi Q-function. We experimentally demonstrate that contrary to a common belief, heterodyne detection outperforms homodyne tomography for almost all Gaussian states.