Scheme for the protective measurement of a single photon using a tunable quantum Zeno effect

Abstract

This paper presents a proof-of-principle scheme for the protective measurement of a single photon. In this scheme, the photon is looped arbitrarily many times through an optical stage that implements a weak measurement of a polarization observable followed by a strong measurement protecting the state. The ability of this scheme to realize a large number of such interaction-protection steps means that the uncertainty in the measurement result can be drastically reduced while maintaining a sufficient probability for the photon to survive the measurement.