Protection of Noise Squeezing in a Quantum Interferometer with Optimal Resource Allocation

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 130; no. 7; p. 073601
• Main Authors: Huang, Wenfeng, Liang, Xinyun, Zhu, Baiqiang, Yan, Yuhan, Yuan, Chun-Hua, Zhang, Weiping, Chen, L Q
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 17.02.2023
• ISSN: 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.073601

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 interferometer can greatly reduce the quantum source requirements in quantum measurements. In theory, with a 66.6% loss rate, the sensitivity can break the SQL using only a 6.0 dB squeezed quantum resource with the current interferometer rather than a 24 dB squeezed quantum resource with a conventional squeezing-vacuum-injected Mach-Zehnder interferometer. In experiments, when using a 2.0 dB squeezed vacuum state, the sensitivity enhancement remains at ∼1.6  dB via optimizing the first splitting ratio when the loss rate changes from 0% to 90%, indicating that the quantum resource is excellently protected with the existence of losses in practical applications. This strategy could open a way to retain quantum advantages for quantum information processing and quantum precision measurement in lossy environments.