Abstract

The beamsplitter is the simplest optical measurement device. It is phase-insensitive, and thus the measurement precision and signal preservation (expressed by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) transfer coefficients T_M and T_s) can not simultaneously be perfect for measurements of a particular electric field quadrature. The degradation of the SNR is due to vacuum fluctuations entering through the unused beamsplitter port, limiting the sum T_s + T_M to 1. By replacing the vacuum with squeezed light, ideal quantum nondemolition (QND) properties are predicted to be achievable in the limit of perfect squeezing. [1]

© 1996 Optical Society of America