Abstract
The drive for both noise-free message transmission1,2 and high precision gravity wave detection3,4 has stimulated immense effort on a key element, a squeezed state5,6 of the electromagnetic field. Such non-classical states have been investigated theoretically in great detail1–7 and have now been realized experimentally in four laboratories in the United States8–13. However, nowhere in the literature have we been able to find the striking feature of a squeezed state which we report here: an oscillatory distribution in photon number14,15. These oscillations, and the conditions which produce them, came to light in the course of an investigation of sudden transitions16 (the Franck–Condon effect in molecular physics17,18) based on the semi-classical description of a quantum state19 as motion of a representative point in the phase space defined by oscillator coordinate and oscillator momentum.
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Schleich, W., Wheeler, J. Oscillations in photon distribution of squeezed states and interference in phase space. Nature 326, 574–577 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/326574a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/326574a0
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