Complex two-mode quadratures for broadband quantum optics

In their seminal paper, Caves and Schumaker presented a new formalism for quantum optics, intended to serve as a building block for describing two-photon processes, in terms of new, generalized qudratures. The important, revolutionary concept in their formalism was that it was fundamentally two-mode, i.e. the related observables could not be attributed to any single one of the comprising modes, but rather to a generalized complex quadrature that could only be attributed to both of them. Here, we propose a subtle, but fundamentally meaningful modification to their important work. Unlike the above proposal, we deliberately choose a frequency-agnostic definition of the two-mode quadrature, that we motivate on physical grounds. This simple modification has far-reaching implications to the formalism – the real and imaginary parts of the quadratures now coincide with the famous EPR variables, and our two-mode operators transform trivially under two-mode and single-mode squeezing operations. Their quadratic forms, which we call the “quadrature powers” are shown to succinctly generate the SU(1, 1) algebra of squeezing Hamiltonians, and correspond directly to important, broadband physical observables, that have been directly measured in experiment and are explicitly related to properties like squeezing and entanglement. This new point of view gives a fresh perspective on two-mode processes that is completely agnostic to the bandwidth, and reveals intriguing new ways for understanding and measuring broadband two-mode squeezing.