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arXiv:1902.09247 · Physical Review A

Estimation of an optomechanical parameter via weak-value amplification

Sergio Carrasco, Miguel Orszag

Published Apr 11, 2022• 6 citations
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Abstract

In this article we present an experimental proposal for the estimation of an optomechanical parameter in the presence of noise. The estimation is based on the technique of weak-value amplification which can enlarge the radiation pressure effect of a single photon on a mechanical oscillator. In our setup we show that the weak-value amplification technique is preferable for the estimation over a method that relies on a strong measurement with postselection because the first method does not require a good prior knowledge of the parameter we wish to estimate, while both strategies reach the same level of precision from a Fisher information perspective. In the presence of strongly correlated noise, the weak-value amplification method is preferable, from a Fisher information perspective, than a standard measurement strategy that does not employ postselection and that is affected by the same type of noise.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.105.043508

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In this article we present an experimental proposal for the estimation of an optomechanical parameter in the presence of noise. The estimation is based on the technique of weak-value amplification which can enlarge the radiation pressure effect of a single photon on a mechanical oscillator. In our setup we show that the weak-value amplification technique is preferable for the estimation over a method that relies on a strong measurement with postselection because the first method does not require a good prior knowledge of the parameter we wish to estimate, while both strategies reach the same level of precision from a Fisher information perspective. In the presence of strongly correlated noise, the weak-value amplification method is preferable, from a Fisher information perspective, than a standard measurement strategy that does not employ postselection and that is affected by the same type of noise.
In this article we present an experimental proposal for quantum enhanced estimation of optomechanical parameters. The precision of the estimation is improved by using the technique of weak value amplification, which can enlarge the radiation pressure effect of a single-photon on a nano/micro mechanical oscillator. This task is accomplished by using two interferometric setups. Single-photon pulses are sent through one interferometer, producing a maximally path entangled state which drives the cavity optomechanical system. The photons are then postselected in one of the detectors in the output. A second interferometer, whose operation is triggered by every successful postselection, performs an optical measurement of the phase shift generated by the optomechanical system on a classical beam, which encodes the information of the optomechanical parameters. In the presence of fully time-correlated noise, we show that the Fisher information is improved as compared to a standard measurement that employs no postselection.
An experimental proposal is presented in which dark port postselection together with weak measurements are used to enlarge the radiation pressure effect of a single photon on a mechanical oscillator placed in the middle of a Fabry-P\'erot cavity and initialized in the ground state. By preparing and postselecting the photon (the system) in two quasiorthogonal states, the weak value of the radiation force operator can lie outside the eigenvalue spectrum, producing a large shift on the wave function of the mechanical oscillator (the measuring device) in the position representation. Consequently, the effect of a single photon on the average position of the oscillator can be amplified as compared to the effect caused by a photon without postselection, i.e., only preselected. The strong measurement scenario is also analyzed. In this case, a higher amplification effect is achieved and the mean position of the oscillator can reach the level of the zero-point fluctuations, but the postselection probabilities are smaller. Finally, the situation in which the oscillator starts in a thermal equilibrium state is studied. In this case, the amplification of the average position remains the same, i.e., proportional to the weak value, but the signal-to-noise ratio is reduced by a factor that depends on the average number of thermal phonons.
Postselection strategies have been proposed with the aim of amplifying weak signals, which may help to overcome detection thresholds associated with technical noise in high-precision measurements. Here we use an optical setup to experimentally explore two different postselection protocols for the estimation of a small parameter: a weak-value amplification procedure and an alternative method that does not provide amplification but nonetheless is shown to be more robust for the sake of parameter estimation. Each technique leads approximately to the saturation of quantum limits for the estimation precision, expressed by the Cram\'er-Rao bound. For both situations, we show that parameter estimation is improved when the postselection statistics are considered together with the measurement device.
Abstract Most studies for postselected weak measurement in optomechanical system focus on using a single photon as a measured system. However, we find that using weak coherent light instead of a single photon can also amplify the mirror’s position displacement of one photon. In the weak value amplification (WVA) regime, the weak value of one photon can lie outside the eigenvalue spectrum, proportional to the difference of the mirror’s position displacement between the successful and failed postselection and its successful postselection probability is dependent of the mean photon number of the coherent light and improved by adjusting it accordingly. Outside the WVA regime, the amplification limit can reach the level of the vacuum fluctuations, and when the mean photon number and the optomechanical coupling parameter are selected appropriately, its successful postselection probability becomes higher, which is beneficial to observe the maximum amplification value under the current experimental conditions. This result breaks the constraint that it is difficult to detect outside the WVA regime. This opens up a new regime for the study of a single photon nonlinearity in optomechanical system.
We present a parameter estimation technique based on performing joint measurements of a weak interaction away from the weak-value-amplification approximation. Two detectors are used to collect full statistics of the correlations between two weakly entangled degrees of freedom. Without discarding of data, the protocol resembles the anomalous amplification of an imaginary-weak-value-like response. The amplification is induced in the difference signal of both detectors allowing robustness to different sources of technical noise, and offering in addition the advantages of balanced signals for precision metrology. All of the Fisher information about the parameter of interest is collected. A tunable phase controls the strength of the amplification response. We experimentally demonstrate the proposed technique by measuring polarization rotations in a linearly polarized laser pulse. We show that in the presence of technical noise the effective sensitivity and precision of a split detector is increased when compared to a conventional continuous-wave balanced detection technique.
We show by using statistically rigorous arguments that the technique of weak value amplification does not perform better than standard statistical techniques for the tasks of single parameter estimation and signal detection. Specifically, we prove that postselection, a necessary ingredient for weak value amplification, decreases estimation accuracy and, moreover, arranging for anomalously large weak values is a suboptimal strategy. In doing so, we explicitly provide the optimal estimator, which in turn allows us to identify the optimal experimental arrangement to be the one in which all outcomes have equal weak values (all as small as possible) and the initial state of the meter is the maximal eigenvalue of the square of the system observable. Finally, we give precise quantitative conditions for when weak measurement (measurements without postselection or anomalously large weak values) can mitigate the effect of uncharacterized technical noise in estimation.