Abstract:
Optical phase estimation serves as a vital measurement technique for achieving high-precision quantification of various physical quantities, such as length, displacement, and velocity. The use of nonclassical states of light, such as squeezed states and entangled states, enables enhanced estimation precision, realizing quantum-enhanced phase estimation. In this work, an experimentally prepared squeezed state with a purity of 0.977 was utilized as the probe light source. By combining balanced homodyne detection with Bayesian inference, we achieved a phase estimation precision that surpasses the standard quantum limit. At the optimal operating phase point, the measurement precision reached quantum Cramér–Rao bound. Experimental results confirmed that for pure squeezed states, balanced homodyne detection constitutes the optimal measurement strategy. This validated the superior performance of the proposed approach in quantum precision measurement, provided a simple and efficient phase estimation scheme, and offered a valuable reference for multiparameter estimation based on multipartite entangled states.