English

Protective measurements of photon polarization using a temporal pointer

Quantum Physics 2023-08-28 v1

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate protective measurements by weakly coupling the polarization of a single-photon-level field to a measurement pointer that corresponds to the arrival time of the photon. By using an optical loop, we implement a variable, controlled number (1-9) of protection and measurement stages. We demonstrate the measurement of expectation values of photon polarization by measuring arrival times while simultaneously protecting the polarization state. No knowledge of the initial photon state is required or available in our experiment, demonstrating that protective measurements provide a genuine information gain that cannot simply be reduced to a priori information about the protection procedure.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.13122,
  title  = {Protective measurements of photon polarization using a temporal pointer},
  author = {Meng-Wei Chen and Owen Young and Maximilian Schlosshauer and M. Beck},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.13122},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

9 pages, 6 figures, identical to published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:03:56.656Z