Experimental macroscopic coherence by phase-covariant cloning of a single photon

Abstract

We investigate the multiphoton states generated by high-gain optical parametric amplification of a single injected photon, polarization encoded as a ''qubit''. The experiment configuration exploits the optimal phase-covariant cloning in the high gain regime. The interference fringe pattern showing the non local transfer of coherence between the injected qubit and the mesoscopic amplified output field involving up to 4000 photons has been investigated. A probabilistic new method to extract full information about the multiparticle output wavefunction has been implemented.