Pulsed homodyne measurements of femtosecond squeezed pulses generated by single-pass parametric deamplification

A new scheme is described for the generation of pulsed squeezed light by use of femtosecond pulses that have been parametrically deamplified through a single pass in a thin (100-microm) potassium niobate crystal with a significant deamplification of approximately -3 dB. The quantum noise of each pulse is registered in the time domain by single-shot homodyne detection operated with femtosecond pulses; the best squeezed quadrature variance was 1.87 dB below the shot-noise level. Such a scheme provides a basic resource for time-resolved quantum communication protocols.