No Arabic abstract
The phase uncertainty of an unseeded nonlinear interferometer, where the output of one nonlinear crystal is transmitted to the input of a second crystal that analyzes it, is commonly said to be below the shot-noise level but highly dependent on detection and internal loss. Unbalancing the gains of the first (source) and second (analyzer) crystals leads to a configuration that is tolerant against detection loss. However, in terms of sensitivity, there is no advantage in choosing a stronger analyzer over a stronger source, and hence the comparison to a shot-noise level is not straightforward. Internal loss breaks this symmetry and shows that it is crucial whether the source or analyzer is dominating. Based on these results, claiming a Heisenberg scaling of the sensitivity is more subtle than in a balanced setup.
We demonstrate the applicability of the EPR entanglement squeezing scheme for enhancing the shot-noise-limited sensitivity of a detuned dual-recycled Michelson interferometers. In particular, this scheme is applied to the GEO,600 interferometer. The effect of losses throughout the interferometer, arm length asymmetries, and imperfect separation of the signal and idler beams are considered.
The sensitivity properties of an SU(1,1) interferometer made of two cascaded parametric amplifiers, as well as of an ordinary SU(2) interferometer preceded by a squeezer and followed by an anti-squeezer, are theoretically investigated. Several possible experimental configurations are considered, such as the absence or presence of a seed beam, direct or homodyne detection scheme. In all cases we formulate the optimal conditions to achieve phase super-sensitivity, meaning a sensitivity overcoming the shot-noise limit. We show that for a given gain of the first parametric amplifier, unbalancing the interferometer by increasing the gain of the second amplifier improves the interferometer properties. In particular, a broader super-sensitivity phase range and a better overall sensitivity can be achieved by gain unbalancing.
A new type of quantum entangled interferometer was recently realized that employs parametric amplifiers as the wave splitting and recombination elements. The quantum entanglement stems from the parametric amplifiers, which produce quantum correlated fields for probing the phase change signal in the interferometer. This type of quantum entangled interferometer exhibits some unique properties that are different from traditional beam splitter-based interferometers such as Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Because of these properties, it is superior to the traditional interferometers in many aspects, especially in the phase measurement sensitivity. We will review its unique properties and applications in quantum metrology and sensing, quantum information, and quantum state engineering.
We study a nonlinear interferometer consisting of two consecutive parametric amplifiers, where all three optical fields (pump, signal and idler) are treated quantum mechanically, allowing for pump depletion and other quantum phenomena. The interaction of all three fields in the final amplifier leads to an interference pattern from which we extract the phase uncertainty. We find that the phase uncertainty oscillates around a saturation level that decreases as the mean number $N$ of input pump photons increases. For optimal interaction strengths, we also find a phase uncertainty below the shot-noise level and obtain a Heisenberg scaling $1/N$. This is in contrast to the conventional treatment within the parametric approximation, where the Heisenberg scaling is observed as a function of the number of down-converted photons inside the interferometer.
We give a detailed discussion of optimal quantum states for optical two-mode interferometry in the presence of photon losses. We derive analytical formulae for the precision of phase estimation obtainable using quantum states of light with a definite photon number and prove that maximization of the precision is a convex optimization problem. The corresponding optimal precision, i.e. the lowest possible uncertainty, is shown to beat the standard quantum limit thus outperforming classical interferometry. Furthermore, we discuss more general inputs: states with indefinite photon number and states with photons distributed between distinguishable time bins. We prove that neither of these is helpful in improving phase estimation precision.