Multi-step two-copy distillation of squeezed states via two photon subtraction

Abstract Squeezed states of light have been improving the sensitivity of gravitational-wave observatories and are nonclassical resources of quantum cryptography and envisioned photonic quantum computers. The higher the squeeze factor is, the higher is the quantum advantage. Almost all applications of squeezed light require multi-path optical interference, whose unavoidable imperfections introduce optical loss, degrade the squeeze factor, as well as the quantum advantage. Here, for the first time, we experimentally demonstrate the distillation of Gaussian squeezed states that suffered from Gaussian photon loss. Our demonstration already involves two distillation steps. The first step improved the squeeze factor from 2.4 dB to 2.8 dB by the subtraction of two photons. The second step improved the value from 2.8 dB to 3.4 dB by a Gaussification protocol. It was realised on data measured at different times via an 8-port balanced homodyne detector and via data post-processing. The number of distillation steps can be increased by longer data sampling times, without additional hardware. We propose and discuss the application to quantum cryptography and photonic quantum computers.