Phase estimation with two-mode squeezed-vacuum and parity detection restricted to finite resources

Abstract

A recently proposed phase-estimation protocol that is based on measuring the parity of a two-mode squeezed-vacuum state at the output of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer shows that Cramér-Rao bound sensitivity can be obtained [P.\ M.\ Anisimov, et al., Phys.\ Rev.\ Lett.\ {\bf104}, 103602 (2010)]. This sensitivity, however, is expected in the case of an infinite number of parity measurements made on an infinite number of photons. Here we consider the case of a finite number of parity measurements and a finite number of photons, implemented with photon-number-resolving detectors. We use Bayesian analysis to characterize the sensitivity of the phase estimation in this scheme. We have found that our phase estimation becomes biased near 0 or $\pi /2$ phase values. Yet there is an in-between region where the bias becomes negligible. In this region, our phase estimation scheme saturates the Cramér-Rao bound and beats the shot-noise limit.

13 pages, 10 figures

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