Several experimental realizations of symmetric phase-covariant quantum cloners of single-photon qubits

We compare several optical implementations of phase-covariant cloning machines. The experiments are based on copying of the polarization state of a single photon in bulk optics by a special unbalanced beam splitter or by a balanced beam splitter accompanied by a state filtering. Also the all-fiber-based setup is discussed, where the information is encoded into spatial modes, i.e., the photon can propagate through two optical fibers. Each of the four implementations possesses some advantages and disadvantages that are discussed.