Have you ever thought of using superconducting single-photon detectors for homodyne detection?
In their newest publication, Maximilian Protte and Timon Schapeler from the group Mesoscopic Quantum Optics show how superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) can be used to study the continuous variables of optical quantum states using homodyne detection. From the joint click statistics of two SNSPDs, they measured the phase-dependent quadrature of a weak coherent state, which was interfered with a continuous wave local oscillator in their setup. Due to the unmatched signal-to-noise ratio of SNSPDs, Protte and Schapeler additionally report the highest shot-noise clearance for a balanced optical homodyne detector.
The paper is available at:
