Wideband photon counting and homodyne detection

Abstract

Homodyne detection has been proposed as a means of detecting squeezed coherent radiation. Here the response of a balanced homodyne detector to wideband squeezed coherent states is presented. In order to carry out the analysis the theory of wideband photodetection is reviewed and in order to determine the ultimate performance limits of photoemissive detectors small terms of order \ensuremath{\Delta}\ensuremath{\omega}/${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$ that are usually neglected, where ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$ is the optical carrier frequency and \ensuremath{\Delta}\ensuremath{\omega} is the electronics bandwidth, have been kept. It is shown that the ultimate noise reduction that can be achieved in the noise-power spectrum of a homodyne detector, detecting squeezed coherent radiation, is a factor of 2 worse when photoemissive detectors are used instead of power flux detectors.