Experimental Polarization State Tomography using Photon Counting Polarimeters

摘要

We report on the implementation of a photon counting polarimeter based on a scheme known to be optimal for obtaining the polarization vector of ensembles of spin-1/2 quantum systems. We show how to use this polarimeter to estimate the complete polarization state for generic multi-photon states. State reconstruction using the polarimeter is illustrated by actual measurements on prepared ensembles of one- and two-photon systems. The rate at which the estimated polarization state converges to an asymptote state is also measured and presented.