A new nonlinear Sagnac interferometer (NSI) is proposed by replacing the beam-splitter in the traditional Sagnac interferometer (TSI) with a four-wave mixing process. Such a NSI has better angular velocity sensitivity than the one of the TSI. The standard quantum limit can be beaten and the Heisenberg Limit can even be reached for the ideal case by the NSI. We study the effect of the losses on the angular velocity sensitivity of the NSI and find that the optimal angular velocity, where the best angular velocity sensitivity can be obtained, of the NSI may be dependent on the losses inside the interferometer. Such a NSI has its advantages compared with the TSI and may find its potential applications in quantum metrology.
A new nonlinear Sagnac interferometer (NSI) is proposed by replacing the beam-splitter in the traditional Sagnac interferometer (TSI) with a four-wave mixing process. Such a NSI has better angular velocity sensitivity than the one of the TSI. The standard quantum limit can be beaten and the Heisenberg Limit can even be reached for the ideal case by the NSI. We study the effect of the losses on the angular velocity sensitivity of the NSI and find that the optimal angular velocity, where the best angular velocity sensitivity can be obtained, of the NSI may be dependent on the losses inside the interferometer. Such a NSI has its advantages compared with the TSI and may find its potential applications in quantum metrology.
In order to improve the phase sensitivity of nonlinear Sagnac interferometer, a nonlinear Sagnac fiber optic interferometer based on feedback control is designed to improve the phase sensitivity by introducing a feedback control loop into the nonlinear Sagnac interferometer. This design adopts the composite feedback control structure of Nonlinear Beam Splitter (NBS) and Linear Beam Splitter (BS). By adjusting the reflectivity of the Linear Beam Splitter, the intensity of the feedback signal can be effectively changed to regulate the phase sensitivity of the interferometer. The feedback amplified signal light passes through the Sagnac fiber optic ring before being processed by a second NBS for quantum enhancement to further improve the phase sensitivity of the interferometer. The simulation results show that the phase sensitivity of the interferometer with certain feedback strength is better than that without feedback. Especially when the phase difference is π, the phase sensitivity of the interferometer with low and medium feedback strengths is improved by 33.3% and 28.9% respectively; In addition, the gain coefficient of the NBS is a key parameter affecting the performance of the interferometer, and a suitable gain coefficient can further optimize the phase sensitivity of the interferometer.
Lights carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) have potential applications in precise rotation measurement, especially in remote sensing. Interferometers, especially nonlinear quantum interferometers, have also been proven to greatly improve the measurement accuracy in quantum metrology. By combining these two techniques, we theoretically propose a new atom-light hybrid Sagnac interferometer with OAM lights to advance the precision of the rotation measurement. A rotation sensitivity below standard quantum limit is achieved due to the enhancement of the quantum correlation of the interferometer even with 96% photon losses. This makes our protocol robustness to the photon loss. Furthermore, combining the slow light effect brings us at least four orders of magnitude of sensitivity better than the earth rotation rate. This new type interferometer has potential applications in high precision rotation sensing.
A nonlinear interferometer uses nonlinear elements as beam splitters to split and to recombine optical waves for interference. As a result, the interference fringe size has a nonlinear dependence on the intensity of the field for phase sensing and leads to an enhanced phase signal. In this paper, a practical scheme of nonlinear interferometry for precision phase measurement is analyzed with parametric amplifiers as the nonlinear beam splitters. It is found that the signal due to phase shift is enhanced by a factor of the amplification gain as compared to a linear interferometer with the same phase-sensing light intensity while the quantum noise is kept at the vacuum level, thus, effectively increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) beyond the standard quantum limit. Furthermore, the scheme is not as sensitive to the detection loss as the linear scheme with a squeezed state for noise reduction. However, losses inside the interferometer limit the enhancement factor in SNR. We apply the concept to a Michelson interferometer but with parametric amplifiers involved for gravitational-wave detection. We find that effective power is increased by the gain of the amplifiers without actually increasing the cycling power inside the interferometer. Furthermore, the full benefits with squeezed input and variational output or the combination of a quantum nondemolition interferometer for sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit apply here with even better results. Such a nonlinear interferometer will find wide applications in precision measurements.
We propose a different type of nonlinear interferometer, namely, four-beam nonlinear interferometer, which can realize phase-sensitivity enhancement. We compare the phase sensitivity of the four-beam nonlinear interferometer and the corresponding shot-noise limit. Our results demonstrate that the four-beam nonlinear interferometer can achieve a phase-sensitivity enhancement compared with the corresponding shot-noise limit. Moreover, taking the losses into consideration, the phase sensitivity of the four-beam nonlinear interferometer can also beat the corresponding shot-noise limit. Our scheme may find potential applications in multiparameter quantum metrology.
Lights carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) have potential applications in precise rotation measurement, especially in remote sensing. Interferometers, especially nonlinear quantum interferometers, have also been proven to greatly improve the measurement accuracy in quantum metrology. By combining these two techniques, we theoretically propose a new atom-light hybrid Sagnac interferometer with OAM lights to advance the precision of the rotation measurement. A rotation sensitivity below standard quantum limit is achieved due to the enhancement of the quantum correlation of the interferometer even with 96% photon losses. This makes our protocol robustness to the photon loss. Furthermore, combining the slow light effect brings us at least four orders of magnitude of sensitivity better than the earth rotation rate. This new type interferometer has potential applications in high precision rotation sensing.
Michelson interferometer can be applied to not only the building block of the fundamental research of physics, but also the precise measurement, such as the direct observation of gravity wave signal. Therefore, high performance Michelson interferometer is the key step towards the implementation of direct observation of weak gravity wave signal. Recently, the vacuum noise was reduced by injecting squeezed vacuum into the unused port of Michelson interferomter, and the phase signal optical field in Mach-Zender interferometer is amplified based on the four-wave mixing in hot Rubidium atom. Here we study high sensitivity quantum Michelson interferometer. In the Michelson interferometer, the linear optical beam splitter is replaced by a non-degenerated optical parametric amplifier to realize the splitting and combining of optical fields, and the squeezed vacuum is also injected into the unused port of interferomter, so that the high signal-to-noise ratio and high sensitivity of phase measurement can be realized. Due to the inevitable optical losses, the losses inside and outside the Michelson interferometer are considered in our theoretical model. We investigate the influences of the losses inside and outside the Michelson interferometer on the sensitivity of phase measurement. By theoretical calculation, we analyze the dependence of sensitivity of phase measurement on system parameters, such as intensity of optical fields for phase sensing, gain factor of non-degenerated optical parametric amplifier, the losses inside and outside the Michelson interferometer, and the squeezing parameter of input squeezed vacuum, and thus the condition of high sensitivity nonlinear Michelson interferometer can be obtained. In a broad system parametric range, the quantum Michaleson interferometer can surpass standard quantum limit, and the nonlinear Michaleson interferometer with squeezed state injection can provide the optimal sensitivity for phase measurement. The nonlinear Michelson interferometer with squeezed state is suitable for weak signal measurement. While the gain factor of non-degenerated optical parametric amplifier is large enough, the nonlinear Michelson interferometer without injecting the squeezed vacuum can still reach the optimal sensitivity, which reduces the use of quantum resources. When the phase sensing optical field is strong, the linear Michelson interferometer with injecting the squeezed vacuum can also reach the optimal sensitivity, and the sensitivity is robust for both losses inside and outside the interferometer. All the kinds of interferometers are more sensitive to the loss inside the interferometer than outside the interferometer, and the sensitivity of phase measurement can be improved by reducing the loss inside the interferometer. Our result provides direct reference of experimental implementation of high performance interferometer for high precision quantum metrology.