High-Accuracy Optical Homodyne Detection with Low-Efficiency Detectors: "Preamplification" from Antisqueezing

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Abstract
A novel experimental scheme is proposed that allows us to avoid the deterioration of homodyne detection measurements due to nonideal detectors. The basic idea is to "preamplify" the signal by means of antisqueezing. Experimentally, we would employ a squeezer, e.g., a degenerate optical parametric amplifier, that squeezes just the nonobserved quadrature component of the electric field while antisqueezing the conjugate component which is measured. It is shown that for sufficiently strong antisqueezing one achieves the same measurement accuracy as with perfectly efficient detectors. In particular, in this way the actual Wigner function can be reconstructed in cptical homodyne tomography.