UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Complete Temporal Characterization of Single Photons

Precise information about the temporal mode of optical states is crucial for optimizing their interaction efficiency between themselves and/or with matter in various quantum communi-cation devices. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a method of determining both the real and imaginary components of a single photon’s temporal density matrix by measuring the autocorrelation function of the photocurrent from a balanced homodyne de-tector at multiple local oscillator frequencies. We lay the theoretical foundation for our work and describe the experimental methods involved in detail. We show the results of testing our method on single photons heralded from bi-photons generated via four-wave mixing in an atomic vapor. We develop an appropriate theoretical model for our experimental settings and describe the involved calculations explicitly. The obtained experimental results show excellent agreement with theoretical predictions for the various settings involved. i Acknowledgements I wish to utilize this opportunity to thank all those people without who going throug