Application of photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum states to phase estimation based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

Quantum metrology is to estimate accurately the value of an unknown parameter with the assistance of the quantum effects, in order to break through the standard quantum limit, even reach the Heisenberg limit. In this work, we study the performance of a general photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum state that is taken as a detection state of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Based on quantum Fisher information, within the constraint on the total mean photon number, symmetric and asymmetric photon addition cannot improve the ultimate phase sensitivity. However, for a given initial squeezing parameter, on this occasion, the symmetric and asymmetric photon addition can improve the ultimate phase sensitivity. Compared with the asymmetric photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum state, the symmetric one can well improve the ultimate phase sensitivity. This may be because it is always better to implement the symmetric photon addition rather than the asymmetric one in order to increase the mean photon number of the resulting state. On the other hand, via parity detection, the symmetric and asymmetric photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum state can indeed improve the phase sensitivity of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer for a given initial squeezing parameter. Based on the parity detection, within a constraint on the mean photon number, although the two-mode squeezed vacuum state can give the better phase sensitivity at the optimal phase shift (<i>φ</i> = 0), the phase sensitivity offered by the symmetric and asymmetric photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum states are both more stable around <i>φ</i> = 0 than by the two-mode squeezed vacuum state. In addition, we show that for the symmetric photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum state, parity detection is an optimal detection only when the optimal phase shift approaches to zero. When the phase shift slightly deviates from zero, the parity detection is not an optimal detection scheme. Finally, for all values of the phase shift, our results also clearly show that the parity detection is not an optimal detection scheme for the asymmetric photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum state serving as an interferometer state.