Homodyne detection is optimal for quantum interferometry with path-entangled coherent states

Abstract: We present measurement schemes that do not rely on photon-number resolving detectors, but that are nevertheless optimal for estimating a differential phase shift in interferometry with either an entangled coherent state or a qubit-which-path state (where the path taken by a coherent-state wavepacket is entangled with the state of a qubit). The homodyning schemes analyzed here achieve optimality (saturate the quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound) by maximizing the sensitivity of measurement outcomes to phase-dependent interference fringes in a reduced Wigner distribution. In the presence of photon loss, the schemes become suboptimal, but we find that their performance is independent of the phase to be measured. They can therefore be implemented without any prior information about the phase and without adapting the strategy during measurement, unlike strategies based on photon-number parity measurements or direct photon counting.