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Physical Review A

SU(2) and SU(1,1) interferometers

Bernard Yurke, S. L. McCall, John R. Klauder

Published Jun 1, 1986• 1,369 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A Lie-group-theoretical approach to the analysis of interferometers is presented. Conventional interferometers such as the Mach-Zehnder and Fabry-Perot can be characterized by SU(2). We introduce a class of interferometers characterized by SU(1,1). These interferometers employ active elements such as four-wave mixers or degenerate-parametric amplifiers in their construction. Both the SU(2) and SU(1,1) interferometers can in principle achieve a phase sensitivity \ensuremath{\Delta}\ensuremath{\varphi} approaching 1/N, where N is the total number of quanta entering the interferometer, provided that the light entering the input ports is prepared in a suitable quantum state. SU(1,1) interferometers can achieve this sensitivity with fewer optical elements.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.33.4033

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We theoretically investigate an interferometer composed of four four-wave-mixers by Lie group method. Lie group SU(1,2) characterizes the mode transformations of this kind of interferometer. With vacuum state inputs, the phase sensitivity of SU(1,2) interferometer achieves the Heisenberg limit, and the absolute accuracy beats SU(1,1) interferometer because of higher intensity of light inside the interferometer. For different input cases, the optimal combination of output photon number for detection to obtain the best phase sensitivity is calculated. Our research on SU(1,2) interferometer sheds light on the performance of SU(1,n) interferometer in quantum metrology.
We study the phase sensitivity of SU(2) and SU(1,1) interferometers fed by two-mode field states which are intelligent states for Hermitian generators of the SU(2) and SU(1,1) groups, respectively. Intelligent states minimize uncertainty relations and this makes possible an essential reduction of the quantum noise in interferometers. Exact closed expressions for the minimum detectable phase shift are obtained in terms of the Jacobi polynomials. These expressions are compared with results for some conventional input states, and some known results for the squeezed input states are reviewed. It is shown that the phase sensitivity for an interferometer that employs squeezing-producing active devices (such as four-wave mixers) should be analyzed in two regimes: (i) fixed input state and variable interferometer, and (ii) fixed interferometer and variable input state. The behavior of the phase sensitivity is essentially different in these two regimes. The use of the SU(2) intelligent states allows us to achieve a phase sensitivity of order 1/N\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{} (where N\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{} is the total number of photons passing through the phase shifters of the interferometer) without adding four-wave mixers. This avoids the duality in the behavior of the phase sensitivity that occurs for the squeezed input. On the other hand, the SU(1,1) intelligent states have the property of achieving the phase sensitivity of order 1/N\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{} in both regimes. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
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A geometric approach to the analysis of interferometers is presented in which beam splitters and phase shifters are described as performing rotations in an abstract three space on the state vector of the light. This formulation allows one to take full advantage of representation theory for the group SU(2) in analyzing interferometer sensitivity. With these techniques it is easy to show that in conventional interferometry, where light enters only one input port, the phase sensitivity scales as the inverse square root of the number of photons that pass through the interferometer during measurement time.
We theoretically study the phase sensitivity of an SU(1,1) interferometer with a coherent state in one input port and a squeezed-vacuum state in the other input port using the method of homodyne detection. In this interferometer, beam splitting and recombination are generated by the parametric amplifiers instead of the beam splitters. Compared with the traditional Mach–Zehnder interferometer, the phase sensitivity of this interferometer can be improved due to the amplification process of the parametric amplifiers. Combined with the squeezed state input, the sensitivity can be improved further due to the noise reduction. The phase sensitivity of our scheme can approach the Heisenberg limit and the associated optimal condition is analyzed. The scheme can be implemented with current experimental technology.