Quantum enhanced measurement of an optical frequency comb

Measuring the spectral properties of an optical frequency comb is among the most fundamental tasks of precision metrology. In contrast to general single-parameter measurement schemes, we demonstrate here single shot multi-parameter estimation of an optical frequency comb at and beyond the standard quantum limit. The mean energy and the central frequency as well as the spectral bandwidth of ultrafast pulses are simultaneously determined with a multi-pixel spectrally resolved (MPSR) apparatus, without changing the photonics architecture. Moreover, using a quantum frequency comb that intrinsically consists of multiple squeezed states in a family of Hermite-Gaussian spectral/temporal modes, the signal-to-noise ratios of the multiple spectral parameters estimation can surpass the standard quantum limit. Combining our multi-pixel detection scheme and the multimode entangled resource could find applications in ultrafast quantum metrology and multimode quantum information processing.

Y. Cai, J. Roslund, V. Thiel, C. Fabre, N. Treps