Sub shot noise measurement with light

Optics is routinely used to measure physical parameters. Quantum mechanics describes how these different strategies are each limited in precision, as quantified by the resources used to perform each type of optical measurement. For example, the fundamental noise floor of optical measurements using a laser is Poisson-distributed and known as the shot noise limit.
In this presentation, I will be discussing how we can use techniques from the field of quantum metrology to achieve optical measurement with precision that surpasses the shot noise limit. We will need to discuss how resources can be and are counted in experiments, some of the physical principles used and we will cover steps being taken to take the proof of principle experiments into practical use outside of the quantum optics laboratory. I will illustrate the presentation with results from my group, including recent demonstration of sub shot noise absorption measurement using correlated photon pairs, detected with optical switching & single photon detectors and correlated intensity measurement using scientific grade charge coupled device cameras (CCD). If we have time, I would like to discuss our work in implementing on-chip homodyne detection, for future application in quantum-enhanced measurement on-chip.