Generation of phase-squeezed optical pulses with large coherent amplitudes by post-selection of single photon and weak cross-Kerr non-linearity

Phase-squeezed light can enhance the precision of optical phase estimation. The larger the photon numbers are and the stronger the squeezing is, the better the precision will be. We propose an experimental scheme for generating phase-squeezed light pulses with large coherent amplitudes. In our scheme, one arm of a single-photon Mach-Zehnder interferometer interacts with coherent light via a non-linear optical Kerr medium to generate a coherent superposition state. Post-selecting the single photon by properly tuning a variable beam splitter in the interferometer yields a phase-squeezed output.