GENERATION AND DETECTION OF NONCLASSICAL STATES IN THE CONTINUOUS VARIABLE REGIME

Squeezed states of light addressed in this Thesis have proved to be the most readily accessible optical fields with demonstrably quantum mechanical behaviour in the Continuous Variable regime and they are considered at the heart of Quantum Mechanics. They may be concretely applied in several research fields such as metrology and quantum information science, as well as enabling to investigate the properties of the quantum world. Since their first observation, considerable progresses have been made in their generation and detection techniques. The research activity presented in this Thesis is devoted to the development of an experimental setup based thereon. The heart of generation process is a sub-threshold Optical Parametric Oscillator whereas the detection system is based on Homodyne Detector. On this structural background, we implemented an electronic/optical apparatus whereby it is possible to generate different kinds of squeezed states on demand. This Thesis presents how these engineered generation/acquisition processes work. Besides, it features a miniaturized Homodyne detection system based on a waveguide beam splitter inscribed in a glass substrate by femtosecond laser writing technology. We demonstrate for the first time the possibility to use such a device to detect genuine nonclassical features of light.