Optical telecom networks as weak quantum measurements with postselection

 Authors: N Brunner, A Acin, D Collins, N Gisin, V Scarani Physical Review Letters 91, 180402 (2003) http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.180402 We show that weak measurements with postselection, proposed in the context of the quantum theory of measurement, naturally appear in the everyday physics of fiber optics telecom networks through polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization-dependent losses (PDL). Specifically, the PMD leads to a time-resolved discrimination of polarization; the postselection is done in the most natural way: one postselects those photons that have not been lost because of the PDL. The quantum formalism is shown to simplify the calculation of optical networks in the telecom limit of weak PMD. pmdpdl.pdf

BibTeX Source

@ARTICLE{Brunner2003,
author = {Brunner, N. and Acin, A. and Collins, D. and Gisin, N. and Scarani,
V.},
title = {Optical telecom networks as weak quantum measurements with postselection},
journal = {Physical Review Letters},
year = {2003},
volume = {91},
pages = {180402},
number = {18},
abstract = {We show that weak measurements with postselection, proposed in the
context of the quantum theory of measurement, naturally appear in
the everyday physics of fiber optics telecom networks through polarization-mode
dispersion (PMD) and polarization-dependent losses (PDL). Specifically,
the PMD leads to a time-resolved discrimination of polarization;
the postselection is done in the most natural way: one postselects
those photons that have not been lost because of the PDL. The quantum
formalism is shown to simplify the calculation of optical networks
in the telecom limit of weak PMD. },
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.180402},
owner = {cc},
sn = {0031-9007},
timestamp = {2010.08.20},
ut = {WOS:000186274800002}
}