Bimodal behavior of microlasers investigated with a two-channel photon-number-resolving transition-edge sensor system

“Phase transitions” in small systems: Why standard threshold definitions fail for nanolasers

“…Extensive experimental work conducted in small lasers in the last decades has shown that the transition from incoherent to coherent emission differs from the one observed in macroscopic laser physics: a sudden jump from zero-to full-coherence. Rather, spontaneous squeezing has been, for instance, observed and explained with ad hoc modelling [41] together with forecasts for sizeable transient squeezing due to pulsed pumping [42], squeezing with cw pumping [43], sub-and superradiant emission [44], or superthermal emission due to mode competition [45][46][47][48][49]. The influence of physical parameters on the laser threshold are reviewed in [50], whereby the experimentally observed transition from LED-like emission to lasing [51], is explained with the help of RESE [52].…”

Physics and Applications of High‐β Micro‐ and Nanolasers

“…[144] More recently, a two-channel TES has been introduced that can simultaneously detect the photon number-resolved light emission of the two orthogonal modes. [146] An example of the resulting joint photon-number distribution P ij is depicted in Figure 6. The presence of two well-separated peaks is the basis of the two-state model.…”

Measuring higher-order photon correlations of faint quantum light: a short review

“…Operating between the superconducting phase and the normal resistive phase close to its critical temperature, the number of the photons absorbed in a TES can be read out since the heat from the absorption of a photon causes a gradual transition in the temperature of the TES towards the normal resistive phase. Recently, many experiments have taken the advantage of their close-to-unity efficiency [78], excellent energy resolution [79] and the capability to count tens of photons [80] for reconstruction photon statistics with TESs. Currently, on the down-side is their rather long temporal resolution of typically > 1 µs.…”

“…The characteristics of such states can be measured for example by accessing the joint photon-number distribution of the state with two true photon-number resolving detectors. Detection with two TESs has been employed investigating the characteristics of such states created at least in bimodal microlasers that incorporate strong anti-correlation between the created modes of light [80] and via twin-beam production from PDC emission, which in contrast results in strong photon-number correlation between the created modes [142][143][144][145][146].…”