Interferometric measurement of the quadrature coherence scale using two replicas of a quantum optical state
Résumé
Assessing whether a quantum state $\hat \rho$ is nonclassical (i.e., incompatible with a mixture of coherent states) is a ubiquitous question in quantum optics, yet a nontrivial experimental task because many nonclassicality witnesses are nonlinear in $\hat \rho$. In particular, if we want to witness or measure the nonclassicality of a state by evaluating its quadrature coherence scale, this a priori requires full state tomography. Here, we provide an experimentally friendly procedure for directly accessing this quantity with a simple linear interferometer involving two replicas (independent and identical copies) of the state $\hat \rho$ supplemented with photon number measurements. This finding, that we interpret as an extension of the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect, illustrates the wide applicability of the multicopy interferometric technique in order to circumvent state tomography in quantum optics.