We provide general bounds of phase estimation sensitivity in linear two-mode interferometers. We consider probe states with a fluctuating total number of particles. With incoherent mixtures of state with different total number of particles, particle entanglement is necessary but not sufficient to overcome the shot noise limit. The highest possible phase estimation sensitivity, the Heisenberg limit, is established under general unbiased properties of the estimator. When coherences can be created, manipulated and detected, a phase sensitivity bound can only be set in the central limit, with a sufficiently large repetition of the interferometric measurement.
SU(1,1) interferometers, based on the usage of nonlinear elements, are superior to passive interferometers in phase sensitivity. However, the SU(1,1) interferometer cannot make full use of photons carrying phase information as the second nonlinear element annihilates some of the photons inside. Here, we focus on improving phase sensitivity and propose a new protocol based on a modified SU(1,1) interferometer, where the second nonlinear element is replaced by a beam splitter. We utilize two coherent states as inputs and implement balanced homodyne measurement at the output. Our analysis suggest…
For a squeezing-enhanced SU(2) interferometer, we theoretically investigate the possibility to broaden the phase range of sub-shot-noise sensitivity. We show that this goal can be achieved by implementing detection in both output ports, with the optimal combination of the detectors outputs, leading to a phase sensitivity independent of the interferometer operation point. Provided that each detector is preceded by a phase-sensitive amplifier, this sensitivity could be also tolerant to the detection loss.
We consider various configuration of quantum-enhanced interferometers, both linear (SU(2)) and non-linear (SU(1,1)) ones, as well as hybrid SU(2)/SU(1,1) schemes. Using the unified modular approach, based on the Quantum Cramer-Rao bound, we show that in all practical cases, their sensitivity is limited by the same equations (95) or (97) which first appeared in the pioneering work by C.Caves [Phys.Rev.D 23, 1693 (1981)].
A Michelson-type interferometer with two-mode squeezed coherent state input is considered. Such an interferometer has a better phase sensitivity over the shot-noise limit by a factor of $e^{2r}$, where $r$ is the squeezing parameter [Phys. Rev. A 102,022614 (2020)]. We show that when photon loss and noise in the two arms is asymmetric an optimal choice of the squeezing angle can allow improvement in phase sensitivity without any increase in input or pump power. In particular, when loss occurs only in one arm of the interferometer, we can have improvement in phase sensitivity for photon loss up…
We propose a theoretical scheme to enhance the phase sensitivity by introducing a Kerr nonlinear phase shift into the traditional SU(1,1) interferometer with a coherent state input and homodyne detection. We investigate the realistic effects of photon losses on phase sensitivity and quantum Fisher information. The results show that compared with the linear phase shift in SU(1,1) interferometer, the Kerr nonlinear case can not only enhance the phase sensitivity and quantum Fisher information, but also significantly suppress the photon losses. We also observe that at the same accessible paramete…
Recently, biased weak measurement(BWM) has shown higher precision than both conventional measurement and standard weak measurement(SWM) in optical metrology. In this paper, we propose a scheme of detecting rotation velocity in Sagnac's interferometer with BWM. In particular, BWM employs an additional reduction of photons in the post-selection by introducing a pre-coupling, and the remaining photons have been shown to be extremely sensitive to the estimated parameter. In addition, our numerical results show that the scheme with BWM can obtain a higher sensitivity than the scheme with SWM.
We study the sensitivity of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer that contains in addition to the phase shifter a non-linear element. By including both elements in a cavity or a loop that the light transverses many times, a non-linear kicked version of the interferometer arises. We study its sensitivity as function of the phase shift, the kicking strength, the maximally reached average number of photons, and damping due to photon loss for an initial coherent state. We find that for vanishing damping Heisenberg-limited scaling of the sensitivity arises if squeezing dominates the total photon number. F…
Many works have stated that nonlinear interactions can improve phase sensitivity beyond the Heisenberg limit scaling of $1/N$ with $N$ being the mean photon number. This raises some open questions---among them the conclusive sensitivity limits with respect to single-mode inputs. Namely, when one of two inputs is vacuum, is there a shot-noise-style sensitivity bound on a nonlinear Mach-Zehnder interferometer? Within the reach of second-order nonlinear phase shifts, we make an attempt to provide an answer to this question. Based upon phase-averaging approach, this puzzle is partially resolved wi…
We present experimental and theoretical results on a new interferometer topology that nests a SU(2) interferometer, e.g., a Mach-Zehnder or Michelson interferometer, inside a SU(1,1) interferometer, i.e., a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with parametric amplifiers in place of beam splitters. This SU(2)-in-SU(1,1) nested interferometer (SISNI) simultaneously achieves high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit (SQL) and tolerance to photon losses external to the interferometer, e.g., in detectors. We implement a SISNI using parametric amplification by four-wave …
We theoretically studied the quantum Cramér-Rao bound of an actively correlated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (ACMZI), where the quantum Fisher information obtained by the phase-averaging method can give the proper phase-sensing limit without any external phase reference. We numerically calculate the phase sensitivities with the method of homodyne detection and intensity detection in the presence of losses. Under lossless and very low loss conditions, the ACMZI is operated in a balanced case to beat the standard quantum limit (SQL). As the loss increases, the reduction in sensitivity increases. …
Sensitivity Evaluation of SU(1,1) Interferometers with Arbitrary Input Probe State and Homodyne Detections
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur（印度理工学院卡拉格普尔分校）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；CentraleSupélec（中央理工-高等电力学院）；Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay（法国国家科学研究中心-巴黎萨克雷大学纳米科学与工程中心）
Quantum-enhanced phase sensitivity in an all-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer
Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Institut de physique de Nice（尼斯大学，法国国家科学研究中心，尼斯物理研究所）；Télécom Paris-LTCI, Institut Polytechnique de Paris（巴黎电信学院-信息与通信研究所，巴黎理工学院）
An ${\rm SU(1,1)}$ interferometer uses a sequence of two optical parametric amplifiers for achieving sub-shot-noise sensitivity to a phase shift introduced in between. We present the first realization of a wide-field ${\rm SU(1,1)}$ interferometer, where the use of a focusing element enables spatially multimode operation within a broad angle. Over this angle, the interference phase is found to be flat. This property is important for the high sensitivity to the phase front disturbance. Further, $-4.3\pm0.7$ dB quadrature squeezing, an essential requirement to the high sensitivity, is experiment…
We investigate quantum sensing of rotation with a multi-atom Sagnac interferometer and present multi-partite entangled states to enhance the sensitivity of rotation frequency. For studying the sensitivity, we first present a Hermitian generator with respect to the rotation frequency. The generator, which contains the Sagnac phase, is a linear superposition of a z component of the collective spin and a quadrature operator of collective bosons depicting the trapping modes, which enables us to conveniently study the quantum Fisher information (QFI) for any initial states. With the generator, we d…
Interferometers are crucial for precision measurements, including gravitational waves, laser ranging, radar, and imaging. The phase sensitivity, the core parameter, can be quantum-enhanced to break the standard quantum limit (SQL) using quantum states. However, quantum states are highly fragile and quickly degrade with losses. We design and demonstrate a quantum interferometer utilizing a beam splitter with a variable splitting ratio to protect the quantum resource against environmental impacts. The optimal phase sensitivity can reach the quantum Cramér-Rao bound of the system. This quantum in…
In a conventional atomic interferometer employing $N$ atoms, the phase sensitivity is at the standard quantum limit: $1/\sqrt{N}$. Using spin-squeezing, the sensitivity can be increased, either by lowering the quantum noise or via phase amplification, or a combination thereof. Here, we show how to increase the sensitivity, to the Heisenberg limit of $1/N$, while increasing the quantum noise by $\sqrt{N}$, thereby suppressing by the same factor the effect of excess noise. The protocol uses a Schrödinger Cat state representing a superposition of two collective states of $N$ atoms, behaving as a …
Quantum entanglement is a resource in quantum metrology that can be distributed to two orthogonal physical quantities for the enhancement of their joint measurement sensitivity, as demonstrated in quantum dense metrology. On the other hand, we can also devote all the quantum resource to phase measurement only for optimum measurement sensitivity. Here, we experimentally implement a dual-beam scheme in an SU(1,1) interferometer for the optimum phase measurement sensitivity. We demonstrate a 3.9-dB improvement in signal-to-noise ratio over the optimum classical method and this is 3-dB better than…
High precision interferometers are the building blocks of precision metrology and the ultimate interferometric sensitivity is limited by the quantum noise. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a compact quantum interferometer involving two optical parametric amplifiers and the squeezed states generated within the interferometer are directly used for the phase-sensing quantum state. By both squeezing shot noise and amplifying phase-sensing intensity the sensitivity improvement of $4.86\pm 0.24$ dB beyond the standard quantum limit is deterministically realized and a minimum detectable…
We present a new quantum control strategy for increasing the shot-noise-limited sensitivity of optical interferometers. The strategy utilizes active phase-insensitive quantum filtering of the signal inside the interferometer and does not rely on optical squeezing. On the example of the coupled-cavity resonators, employed in the gravitational-wave detectors, we show that fully causal and stable phase-insensitive filters can improve the interferometer sensitivity by more than an order of magnitude. The role of the phase-insensitive component in such systems is to provide frequency-dependent comp…
