Measuring the polarization of a single photon typically results in its destruction. We propose, demonstrate, and completely characterize a quantum nondemolition (QND) scheme for realizing such a measurement nondestructively. This scheme uses only linear optics and photodetection of ancillary modes to induce a strong nonlinearity at the single-photon level, nondeterministically. We vary this QND measurement continuously into the weak regime and use it to perform a nondestructive test of complementarity in quantum mechanics. Our scheme realizes the most advanced general measurement of a qubit to date: it is nondestructive, can be made in any basis, and with arbitrary strength.
We propose a linear optical scheme for direct realization of a nondestructive
N-qubit controlled phase gate without resorting to a sequence of single- and two-qubit gates. The proposed setup involves linear optical elements, nonmaximally entangled pairs of photons, and multiphoton coincidence detection. To implement the scheme, physical qubits represented by the polarization states of single photons are probabilistically encoded into the two-photon states. Based on such encoding operation, a nondestructive
N-qubit phase gate can be directly achieved by
N-photon interference on an array of polarization beam splitters and
N-photon coincidence detection.