Performing homodyne detection at one port of squeezed-state light interferometer and then binarzing measurement data are important to achieve super-resolving and super-sensitive phase measurements. Here we propose a new data-processing technique by d
ividing the measurement quadrature into three bins (equivalent to a multi-outcome measurement), which leads to a higher improvement in the phase resolution and the phase sensitivity under realistic experimental condition. Furthermore, we develop a new phase-estimation protocol based on a combination of the inversion estimators of each outcome and show that the estimator can saturate the Cramer-Rao lower bound, similar to asymptotically unbiased maximum likelihood estimator.
The Cram{e}r-Rao bound plays a central role in both classical and quantum parameter estimation, but finding the observable and the resulting inversion estimator that saturates this bound remains an open issue for general multi-outcome measurements. H
ere we consider multi-outcome homodyne detection in a coherent-light Mach-Zehnder interferometer and construct a family of inversion estimators that almost saturate the Cram{e}r-Rao bound over the whole range of phase interval. This provides a clue on constructing optimal inversion estimators for phase estimation and other parameter estimation in any multi-outcome measurement.
Photon counting measurement has been regarded as the optimal measurement scheme for phase estimation in the squeezed-state interferometry, since the classical Fisher information equals to the quantum Fisher information and scales as $bar{n}^2$ for gi
ven input number of photons $bar{n}$. However, it requires photon-number-resolving detectors with a large enough resolution threshold. Here we show that a collection of $N$-photon detection events for $N$ up to the resolution threshold $sim bar{n}$ can result in the ultimate estimation precision beyond the shot-noise limit. An analytical formula has been derived to obtain the best scaling of the Fisher information.
Squeezed-state interferometry plays an important role in quantum-enhanced optical phase estimation, as it allows the estimation precision to be improved up to the Heisenberg limit by using ideal photon-number-resolving detectors at the output ports.
Here we show that for each individual $N$-photon component of the phase-matched coherent $otimes$ squeezed vacuum input state, the classical Fisher information always saturates the quantum Fisher information. Moreover, the total Fisher information is the sum of the contributions from each individual $N$-photon components, where the largest $N$ is limited by the finite number resolution of available photon counters. Based on this observation, we provide an approximate analytical formula that quantifies the amount of lost information due to the finite photon number resolution, e.g., given the mean photon number $bar{n}$ in the input state, over $96$ percent of the Heisenberg limit can be achieved with the number resolution larger than $5bar{n}$.
We present a detailed analysis of spin squeezing of the one-axis twisting model with a many-body phase dephasing, which is induced by external field fluctuation in a two-mode Bose-Einstein condensates. Even in the presence of the dephasing, our analy
tical results show that the optimal initial state corresponds to a coherent spin state $|theta_{0}, phi_0rangle$ with the polar angle $theta_0=pi/2$. If the dephasing rate $gammall S^{-1/3}$, where $S$ is total atomic spin, we find that the smallest value of squeezing parameter (i.e., the strongest squeezing) obeys the same scaling with the ideal one-axis twisting case, namely $xi^2propto S^{-2/3}$. While for a moderate dephasing, the achievable squeezing obeys the power rule $S^{-2/5}$, which is slightly worse than the ideal case. When the dephasing rate $gamma>S^{1/2}$, we show that the squeezing is weak and neglectable.
Including collisional decoherence explicitly, phase sensitivity for estimating effective scattering strength $chi$ of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate is derived analytically. With a measurement of spin operator $hat{J}_{x}$, we find that the
optimal sensitivity depends on initial coherent spin state. It degrades by a factor of $(2gamma)^{1/3}$ below super-Heisenberg limit $propto 1/N^{3/2}$ for particle number $N$ and the dephasing rate $1<!<gamma<N^{3/4}$. With a $hat{J}_y$ measurement, our analytical results confirm that the phase $phi=chi tsim 0$ can be detected at the limit even in the presence of the dephasing.
Based upon standard angular momentum theory, we develop a framework to investigate polarization squeezing and multipartite entanglement of a quantum light field. Both mean polarization and variances of the Stokes parameters are obtained analytically,
with which we study recent observation of triphoton states [L. K. Shalm {it et al}, Nature textbf{457}, 67 (2009)]. Our results show that the appearance of maximally entangled NOON states accompanies with a flip of mean polarization and can be well understood in terms of quantum Fisher information.
We investigate spin squeezing of a two-mode boson system with a Josephson coupling. An exact relation between the squeezing and the single-particle coherence at the maximal-squeezing time is discovered, which provides a more direct way to measure the
squeezing by readout the coherence in atomic interference experiments. We prove explicitly that the strongest squeezing is along the $J_z$ axis, indicating the appearance of atom number-squeezed state. Power laws of the strongest squeezing and the optimal coupling with particle number $N$ are obtained based upon a wide range of numerical simulations.
