Abstract

The electron flow in a highly dissipative (macroscopic) conductor is quiet, in sharp contrast to the noisy (shot-noise-limited) photon flow in a highly dissipative optical channel. Nonequilibrium shot noise is observed in a ballistic electron transport regime on a mesoscopic scale, but is suppressed by the "Pauli exclusion principle" if there are sufficient inelastic scattering events in the system. This quiet electron flow can be converted to a regulated pump process (sub-Poissonian electron injection across a pn junction) in a semiconductor laser by the "collective Coulomb blockade effect." Generation of amplitude-squeezed states of light from semiconductor lasers is based on two characteristics of electrons: the exclusion principle (for Fermi particles) and the collective Coulomb blockade effect (for charged particles). The degree of squeezing obtained in actual semiconductor lasers is limited by the mode competition noise between different longitudinal, transverse, polarization, and traveling wave modes, as well as by the internal loss. A semiconductor laser with high quantum efficiency and suppressed mode competition noise is indispensable for generation of highly squeezed light. In this talk, recent theoretical and experimental studies on the suppression of shot noise resulting from the exclusion principle, the regulated pump process resulting from the collective Coulomb blockade effect, and excess noise resulting from longitudinal and polarization mode competition will be discussed. The state of the art in semiconductor laser technology for high quantum efficiency and low mode partition noise will be reviewed and the potential applications of amplitude-squeezed light from semiconductor lasers, such as precision interferometry and atomic spectroscopy, will be discussed.

© 1996 Optical Society of America