A quantum laser pointer

Nicolas Treps, Nicolai Grosse, Warwick P. Bowen, Claude Fabre, Bachor Hans-A. Bachor, Ping Koy Lam

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    281 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The measurement sensitivity of the pointing direction of a laser beam is ultimately limited by the quantum nature of light. To reduce this limit, we have experimentally produced a quantum laser pointer, a beam of light whose direction is measured with a precision greater than that possible for a usual laser beam. The laser pointer is generated by combining three different beams in three orthogonal transverse modes, two of them in a squeezed-vacuum state and one in an intense coherent field. The result provides a demonstration of multichannel spatial squeezing, along with its application to the improvement of beam positioning sensitivity and, more generally, to imaging.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)940-943
    Number of pages4
    JournalScience
    Volume301
    Issue number5635
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 15 Aug 2003

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