Linear Optical Quantum Metrology with Single Photons: Exploiting Spontaneously Generated Entanglement to Beat the Shot-Noise Limit

Autor: Motes, Keith R., Olson, Jonathan P., Rabeaux, Evan J., Dowling, Jonathan P., Olson, S. Jay, Rohde, Peter P.
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 170802 (2015)
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.170802
Popis: Quantum number-path entanglement is a resource for super-sensitive quantum metrology and in particular provides for sub-shotnoise or even Heisenberg-limited sensitivity. However, such number-path entanglement has thought to have been resource intensive to create in the first place --- typically requiring either very strong nonlinearities, or nondeterministic preparation schemes with feed-forward, which are difficult to implement. Very recently, arising from the study of quantum random walks with multi-photon walkers, as well as the study of the computational complexity of passive linear optical interferometers fed with single-photon inputs, it has been shown that such passive linear optical devices generate a superexponentially large amount of number-path entanglement. A logical question to ask is whether this entanglement may be exploited for quantum metrology. We answer that question here in the affirmative by showing that a simple, passive, linear-optical interferometer --- fed with only uncorrelated, single-photon inputs, coupled with simple, single-mode, disjoint photodetection --- is capable of significantly beating the shotnoise limit. Our result implies a pathway forward to practical quantum metrology with readily available technology.
Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures
Databáze: arXiv