Sub Shot-Noise interferometric phase sensitivity with Beryllium ions Schroedinger Cat States

Abstract

Interferometry with NOON quantum states can provide unbiased phase estimation with a sensitivity scaling as $\Delta \theta \sim 1/N_T$ given a prior knowledge that the true phase shift $\theta$ lies in the interval $-\pi \leq \theta \leq \pi$. The protocol requires a total of $N_T = 2^{p}-1$ particles (unequally) distributed among $p$ independent measurements and overcomes basic difficulties present in previously proposed approaches. We demonstrate the possibility to obtain a phase sensitivity beating the classical shot-noise limit using published probabilities retrieved experimentally for the creation of Schr\"odinger cat quantum states containing up to N=6 beryllium ions.