Two-path interferometry with coherent states and a squeezed vacuum can achieve phase sensitivities close to the Heisenberg limit when the average photon number of the squeezed vacuum is close to the average photon number of the coherent light. Here, we investigate the phase sensitivity of such states in the presence of photon losses. It is shown that the Cramer-Rao bound of phase sensitivity can be achieved experimentally by using a weak local oscillator and photon counting in the output. The phase sensitivity is then given by the Fisher information $F$ of the state. In the limit of high squeezing, the ratio $(F–N)/N^2$ of Fisher information above shot noise to the square of the average photon number $N$ depends only on the average number of photons lost, $n_{\mathrm{loss}}$, and the fraction of squeezed vacuum photons $\mu$. For $\mu =1/2$, the effect of losses is given by $(F–N)/N^2=1/(1+2n_{\mathrm{loss}})$. The possibility of increasing the robustness against losses by lowering the squeezing fraction $\mu$ is considered, and an optimized result is derived. However, the improvements are rather small, with a maximal improvement by a factor of 2 at high losses.

• Received 19 October 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.81.033819