In this paper, we review the use of parity as a detection observable in quantum metrology as well as introduce some original findings with regards to measurement resolution in Ramsey spectroscopy and quantum non-demolition (QND) measures of atomic parity. Parity was first introduced in the context of Ramsey spectroscopy as an alternative to atomic state detection. It was latter adapted for use in quantum optical interferometry where it has been shown to be the optimal detection observable saturating the quantum Cram{e}r-Rao bound for path symmetric states. We include a brief review of the basics of phase estimation and the connection between parity-based detection and the quantum Fisher information as it applies to quantum optical interferometry. We also discuss the efforts made in experimental methods of measuring photon-number parity and close the paper with a discussion on the use of parity leading to enhanced measurement resolution in multi-atom spectroscopy. We show how this may be of use in the construction of high-precision multi-atom atomic clocks.
We investigate the utility of parity detection to achieve Heisenberg-limited phase estimation for optical interferometry. We consider the parity detection with several input states that have been shown to exhibit sub shot-noise interferometry with their respective detection schemes. We show that with parity detection, all these states achieve the sub-shot noise limited phase estimate. Thus making the parity detection a unified detection strategy for quantum optical metrology. We also consider quantum states that are a combination of a NOON states and a dual-Fock state, which gives a great deal of freedom in the preparation of the input state, and is found to surpass the shot-noise limit.
We present a method of directly obtaining the parity of a Gaussian state of light without recourse to photon-number counting. The scheme uses only a simple balanced homodyne technique, and intensity correlation. Thus interferometric schemes utilizing coherent or squeezed light, and parity detection may be practically implemented for an arbitrary photon flux. Specifically we investigate a two-mode, squeezed-light, Mach-Zehnder interferometer and show how the parity of the output state may be obtained. We also show that the detection may be described independent of the parity operator, and that this parity-by-proxy measurement has the same signal as traditional parity.
Quantum Fourier transforms (QFT) have gained increased attention with the rise of quantum walks, boson sampling, and quantum metrology. Here we present and demonstrate a general technique that simplifies the construction of QFT interferometers using both path and polarization modes. On that basis, we first observed the generalized Hong-Ou-Mandel effect with up to four photons. Furthermore, we directly exploited number-path entanglement generated in these QFT interferometers and demonstrated optical phase supersensitivities deterministically.
We study the sensitivity and resolution of phase measurement in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with two-mode squeezed vacuum (<n> photons on average). We show that super-resolution and sub-Heisenberg sensitivity is obtained with parity detection. In particular, in our setup, dependence of the signal on the phase evolves <n> times faster than in traditional schemes, and uncertainty in the phase estimation is better than 1/<n>.
We develop general tools to characterise and efficiently compute relevant observables of multimode $N$-photon states generated in non-linear decays in one-dimensional waveguides. We then consider optical interferometry in a Mach-Zender interferometer where a $d$-mode photonic state enters in each arm of the interferometer. We derive a simple expression for the Quantum Fisher Information in terms of the average photon number in each mode, and show that it can be saturated by number-resolved photon measurements that do not distinguish between the different $d$ modes.