Phase amplification in optical interferometry with weak measurement

TL;DR

This paper introduces a weak measurement scheme that amplifies phase shifts in optical interferometry, significantly reducing phase uncertainties and enhancing measurement precision.

Contribution

The paper presents the first experimental demonstration of phase amplification using weak measurement in optical interferometry, achieving a factor of 388 amplification.

Findings

Achieved phase amplification factor of 388.

Demonstrated suppression of phase uncertainties.

Improved phase resolution for precision measurements.

Abstract

Improving the phase resolution of interferometry is crucial for high-precision measurements of various physical quantities. Systematic phase errors dominate the phase uncertainties in most realistic optical interferometers. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a weak measurement scheme to considerably suppress the phase uncertainties by the direct amplification of phase shift in optical interferometry. Given an initial ultra-small phase shift between orthogonal polarization states, we observe the phase amplification effect with a factor of 388. Our weak measurement scheme provides a practical approach to significantly improve the interferometric phase resolution, which is favorable for precision measurement applications.