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Results in Physics

Single-photon-added coherent state-based postselected weak measurement

Yi-Fang Ren, Yusuf Turek

Published Jul 30, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We investigated precision measurements in a two-level system coupled to a single-photon-added coherent state (SPACS) under postselected weak measurement. We analyzed strategies for improving measurement precision, including parameter estimation and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in postselected weak measurements, using the photon statistics of SPACS as the meter. Our results demonstrate that SPACS-based postselected weak measurements can outperform conventional measurement schemes in terms of precision. Additionally, we explicitly introduced an alternative weak measurement method, which is commonly applied in dispersive light-atom interactions. Our work presents a novel approach to addressing fundamental issues in quantum precision measurement based on photon statistics, and it provides a method for extracting the photon and phase shifts of radiation fields through the weak values of system observables.

DOI
10.1016/j.rinp.2025.108367

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We investigated precision measurements in a two-level system coupled to a single-photon-added coherent state (SPACS) under postselected weak measurement. We analyzed strategies for improving measurement precision, including parameter estimation and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in postselected weak measurements, using the photon statistics of SPACS as the meter. Our results demonstrate that SPACS-based postselected weak measurements can outperform conventional measurement schemes in terms of precision. Additionally, we explicitly introduced an alternative weak measurement method, which is commonly applied in dispersive light-atom interactions. Our work presents a novel approach to addressing fundamental issues in quantum precision measurement based on photon statistics, and it provides a method for extracting the photon and phase shifts of radiation fields through the weak values of system observables.
Postselected weak measurement is a useful protocol for amplifying weak physical effects. However, there has recently been controversy over whether it gives any advantage in precision. While it is now clear that retaining failed postselections can yield more Fisher information than discarding them, the advantage of postselection measurement itself still remains to be clarified. In this Letter, we address this problem by studying two widely used estimation strategies: averaging measurement results, and maximum likelihood estimation, respectively. For the first strategy, we find a surprising result that squeezed coherent states of the pointer can give postselected weak measurements a higher signal-to-noise ratio than standard ones while all standard coherent states cannot, which suggests that raising the precision of weak measurements by postselection calls for the presence of "nonclassicality" in the pointer states. For the second strategy, we show that the quantum Fisher information of postselected weak measurements is generally larger than that of standard weak measurements, even without using the failed postselection events, but the gap can be closed with a proper choice of system state.
The weak-value-amplification (WVA) technique has been extensively considered and debated in the field of quantum precision measurement, largely owing to the reduced Fisher information caused by the low probability of successful postselection. In this work we show that, rather than the transverse-spatial-wave-function meter typically considered, using the optical coherent state as a meter, the WVA measurement can outperform the conventional measurement not involving the strategy of postselection. We also show that the postselection procedure involved in the WVA scheme can make a mixture of coherent states work better than a pure coherent state with identical average photon numbers. This is in contrast to the main result proved in the absence of postselection. The postselection strategy can also result in the precision of Heisenberg scaling with the photon numbers without using expensive quantum resources. The present work may stimulate further interest in postselection strategy for quantum precision measurements.
In this paper, ordinary and amplitude-squared squeezing as well as Wigner functions of single-photon-added coherent state after postselected von Neumann measurements are investigated. The analytical results show that the weak measurement procedure, which is characterized by postselection and weak value, can significantly change the principal squeezing feature of the single-photon-added coherent state. From the analysis of the Winger function we notice that in the strong measurement regime significant interference structures manifest and the negative regions become larger than the initial pointer state. Our results indicate that after postselected von Neumann measurement the degree of nonclassicality of single-photon-added coherent state is increased. It is anticipated that this work may provide alternate and effective methods for solving the state optimization problems based on the single-photon-added coherent state pointer via a postselected von Neumann measurement technique.
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.
Postselected metrology provides technical advantages such as signal amplification and noise suppression by retaining only the quantum states that satisfy specific criteria. However, its precision remains fundamentally constrained by the shot noise limit. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a quantum-enhanced postselected measurement scheme for phase estimation by leveraging the second-order correlations of thermal light. The failed-postselected photons that would otherwise be discarded are further utilized to condition and transform the detection probability of the postselected photons. Our results show that, at a fixed number of incident photons, the correlation improves the per-detection signal-to-noise ratio beyond that of a coherent probe operating at the shot noise limit. This enhancement arises at the detection stage and does not reduce the number of photons interacting with the sample, providing a robust and accessible strategy for high-precision phase measurement without sophisticated quantum operations.
State preparation via postselected weak measurements in a three-wave mixing process is studied. We assume the signal input mode is prepared in a vacuum state, coherent state, or squeezed vacuum state, while the idler input is prepared in a weak coherent state and passes the medium characterized by the second-order nonlinear susceptibility. It is shown that when the single photon is detected at one of the output channels of the idler beam's path, the signal output channel is prepared in a single-photon Fock state, single-photon-added coherent state, or single-photon-added squeezed vacuum state with very high fidelity, depending upon the input signal states and related controllable parameters. The properties of squeezing, signal amplification, second-order correlation, and the Wigner functions of the weak-measurement-based output states are also investigated. Our scheme promises to provide an alternate effective method for producing useful nonclassical states in quantum information processing.