Quantum Zeno and Anti-Zeno Probes of Noise Correlations in Photon Polarization

We experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, noise diagnostics by repeated quantum measurements, establishing the ability of a single photon subjected to random polarization noise to diagnose non-Markovian temporal correlations of such a noise process. Both the noise spectrum and temporal correlations are diagnosed by probing the photon with frequent (partially) selective polarization measurements. We show that noise with positive temporal correlations corresponds to our single photon undergoing a dynamical regime enabled by the quantum Zeno effect (QZE), whereas noise characterized by negative (anti) correlations corresponds to regimes associated with the anti-Zeno effect (AZE). This is the first step toward a novel noise spectroscopy based on QZE and AZE in single-photon state probing able to extract information on the noise while protecting the probe state, a conceptual paradigm shift with respect to traditional interferometric measurements.

Automated summary

For the first time, we experimentally demonstrate noise diagnostics by repeated quantum measurements, showing the ability of a single photon to diagnose non-Markovian temporal correlations of random polarization noise. We probe the photon with frequent (partially) selective polarization measurements to diagnose both the noise spectrum and temporal correlations. Positive temporal correlations correspond to a regime enabled by the quantum Zeno effect (QZE), while negative correlations correspond to regimes associated with the anti-Zeno effect (AZE).