Demonstration of a reversible phase-insensitive optical amplifier

We experimentally demonstrate phase-insensitive linear amplification of a continuous variable system in the optical regime, preserving the ancilla system at the output. Since our amplification operation is unitary up to small excess noise, it is reversible beyond the classical limit. Here, entanglement between the amplified output system and the ancilla system is the resource for the reversibility, and the amplification gain is G=2.0. In addition, combining this amplifier with a beamsplitter, we also demonstrate approximate cloning of coherent states where an anticlone is present. We investigate the reversibility by reconstructing the initial state from the output correlations, and the results are slightly beyond the cloning limit. Furthermore, full characterization of the amplifier and cloner is given by using coherent states with several different mean values as inputs. Our amplifier is based on linear optics, offline-prepared additional ancillas in nonclassical states, and homodyne measurements followed by feedforward. Squeezed states are used as the additional ancillas, and nonlinear optical effects are exploited only for their generation. They introduce nonclassicality into the amplifying operation, making entanglement at the output.

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