We theoretically study the phase sensitivity of an SU(1,1) interferometer with a coherent state in one input port and a squeezed-vacuum state in the other input port using the method of homodyne detection. In this interferometer, beam splitting and recombination are generated by the parametric amplifiers instead of the beam splitters. Compared with the traditional Mach-Zehnder interferometer, the phase sensitivity of this interferometer can be improved due to the amplification process of the parametric amplifiers. Combined with the squeezed state input, the sensitivity can be improved further due to the noise reduction. The phase sensitivity of our scheme can approach the Heisenberg limit and the associated optimal condition is analyzed. The scheme can be implemented with current experimental technology.

Collective atomic excitation can be realized by the Raman scattering. Such a photon-atom interface can form an SU(1,1)-typed atom-light hybrid interferometer, where the atomic Raman amplification processes take the place of the beam splitting elements in a traditional Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We numerically calculate the phase sensitivities and the signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of this interferometer with the method of homodyne detection and intensity detection, and give their differences of the optimal phase points to realize the best phase sensitivities and the maximal SNRs from these two detection methods. The difference of the effects of loss of light field and atomic decoherence on measure precision is analyzed.

The quantum correlation of light and atomic collective excitation can be used to compose an SU(1,1)-type hybrid light-atom interferometer, where one arm in the optical SU(1,1) interferometer is replaced by the atomic collective excitation. The phase-sensing probes include not only the photon field but also the atomic collective excitation inside the interferometer. For a coherent squeezed state as the phase-sensing field, the phase sensitivity can approach the Heisenberg limit under the optimal conditions. We also study the effects of the loss of light field and the dephasing of atomic excitation on the phase sensitivity. This kind of active SU(1,1) interferometer can also be realized in other systems, such as circuit quantum electrodynamics in microwave systems, which provides a different method for basic measurement using the hybrid interferometers.

We propose an approach for fast random number generation based on homemade optical physical unclonable functions (PUFs). The optical PUF is illuminated with input laser wavefront of continuous modulation to obtain different speckle patterns. Random numbers are fully extracted from speckle patterns through a simple post-processing algorithm. Our proof-of-principle experiment achieves total random number generation rate of 0.96 Gbit/s with verified randomness, which is far faster than previous optical-PUF-based schemes. Our results demonstrate that the presented random number generator (RNG) proposal has great potential to achieve ultrafast random number generation rate up to several hundreds of Gbit/s.

After multiple scattering of quadrature-squeezed lights in a disordered medium, the quadrature amplitudes of the scattered modes present an excess noise above the shot-noise level [Opt. Expr. 14, 6919 (2006)]. A natural question is raised whether there exists a method of suppressing the quadrature fluctuation of the output mode. The answer is affirmative. In this work, we prove that wavefront shaping is a promising method to reduce the quantum noise of quadrature amplitudes of the scattered modes. This reduction is owing to the destructive interference of quantum noise. Specifically, when the single-mode squeezed states are considered as inputs, the quantum fluctuation can always be reduced, even below the shot-noise level. These results may have potential applications in quantum information processing, for instance, sub-wavelength imaging using the scattering superlens with squeezed-state sources.