Noiseless linear amplification via weak measurements

David Menzies, Sarah Croke

Published 2009-03-24Version 1

We discuss the recently introduced concept of non-deterministic noiseless linear amplification, demonstrating that such an operation can only be performed perfectly with vanishing probability of success. We show that a weak measurement, which imprints the weak value of an observable of a pre-selected and post-selected system onto a probe system, can be used to approximate probabilistic noiseless amplification. This result may be applied to various tasks in continuous variable quantum information, including entanglement concentration, probabilistic cloning, and in quantum repeaters. We discuss the application of our scheme to probabilistic cloning of weak coherent states.