Measuring small longitudinal phase shifts: weak measurements or standard interferometry?

Recently, weak measurements were used to measure small effects that are transverse to the propagation direction of a light beam. Here we address the question of whether weak measurements are also useful for measuring small longitudinal phase shifts. We show that standard interferometry greatly outpe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2010-07, Vol.105 (1), p.010405-010405, Article 010405
Main Authors: Brunner, Nicolas, Simon, Christoph
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Recently, weak measurements were used to measure small effects that are transverse to the propagation direction of a light beam. Here we address the question of whether weak measurements are also useful for measuring small longitudinal phase shifts. We show that standard interferometry greatly outperforms weak measurements in a scenario involving a purely real weak value. However, we also present an interferometric scheme based on a purely imaginary weak value, combined with a frequency-domain analysis, which may have the potential to outperform standard interferometry by several orders of magnitude.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.105.010405