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Title: Retrodiction for optical attenuators, amplifiers, and detectors

Journal Article · · Physical Review. A
;  [1];  [2]
  1. Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ (United Kingdom)
  2. Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, John Anderson Building, 107 Rottenrow, Glasgow G4 0NG (United Kingdom)

The transformation that an attenuator makes on the state of an optical field is the time reverse of that of an amplifier. Thus predicting the output state for an amplifier is equivalent to retrodicting the input state of an attenuator. We explore the consequences of this equivalence for simple optical quantum communication channels. One counterintuitive consequence is that the mean number of photons sent into an amplifier as retrodicted from a measurement of the number of output photons does not include the contribution of the amplifier noi0008.

OSTI ID:
20646116
Journal Information:
Physical Review. A, Vol. 70, Issue 3; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.70.033805; (c) 2004 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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