Observation of sub-Poissonian light in traveling-wave second-harmonic generation

Abstract

We report the generation of sub-Poissonian pulses of light by means of traveling-wave second-harmonic generation (SHG) in a type II phase-matched nonlinear crystal. On direct detection, the quantum noise on the output light, which is polarized orthogonally to the input fundamental field, is measured to be below the shotnoise limit by as much as 0.3 +/- 0.2 dB (6 +/- 4%). We show that the input fundamental-power dependence of the measured Fano factor, direct-detection noise as a fraction of the shot-noise limit, is in qualitative agreement with the quantum theory of SHG.