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 p
articular, 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 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 th
eir 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 analyze the optimal state, as given by Berry and Wiseman [Phys. Rev. Lett {bf 85}, 5098, (2000)], under the canonical phase measurement in the presence of photon loss. The model of photon loss is a generic fictitious beam splitter, and we present
the full density matrix calculations, which are more direct and do not involve any approximations. We find for a given amount of loss the upper bound for the input photon number that yields a sub-shot noise estimate.
We present a number of rapid-purification feedback protocols for optical homodyne detection of a single optical qubit. We derive first a protocol that speeds up the rate of increase of the average purity of the system, and find that like the equivale
nt protocol for a non-disspative measurement, this generates a deterministic evolution for the purity in the limit of strong feedback. We also consider two analogues of the Wiseman-Ralph rapid-purification protocol in this setting, and show that like that protocol they speed up the average time taken to reach a fixed level of purity. We also examine how the performance of these algorithms changes with detection efficiency, being an important practical consideration.
