Measuring continuous-variable quantum entanglement with parametric-amplifier-assisted homodyne detection

The traditional method for measuring Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-type continuous-variable quantum entanglement relies on balanced homodyne detections, which are sensitive to vacuum quantum noise coupled in through losses due to various factors such as detector quantum efficiency and mode mismatching between the detected field and the local oscillator. In this paper, we propose and analyze a measurement method, which is realized by assisting the balanced homodyne detections with a high-gain phase-sensitive parametric amplifier. The employment of the phase-sensitive amplifier helps us to tackle the vacuum quantum noise originating from detection losses. Moreover, because the high-gain phase-sensitive amplifier can couple two fields of different types, the proposed scheme can be used to reveal quantum entanglement between two fields of different types by using only one balanced homodyne detection. Furthermore, detailed analysis shows that in the multimode case, the proposed scheme is also advantageous over the traditional method. Such a measurement method should find wide applications in quantum information and quantum metrology involving measurement of continuous variables.