Dynamical analysis of quantum linear systems driven by multi-channel multi-photon states

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of quantum linear systems where the input signals are multi-channel multi-photon states, namely states determined by a definite number of photons superposed in multiple input channels. In contrast to most existing studies on separable input states in the literature, we allow the existence of quantum correlation (for example quantum entanglement) in these multi-channel multi-photon input states. Due to the prevalence of quantum correlations in the quantum regime, the results presented in this paper are very general. Moreover, the multi-channel multi-photon states studied here are reasonably mathematically tractable. Three types of multi-photon states are considered: (1) m photons superposed among m channels, (2) N photons superposed among m channels where N≥m, and (3) N photons superposed among m channels where N is an arbitrary positive integer. Formulae for intensities and states of output fields are derived. Examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results.