High probability scheme for Zero photon subtraction with Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

Photon addition and subtraction involve the addition or removal of photons to manipulate quantum states and are used in various applications. Zero Photon Subtraction (ZPS) is a quantum operation that reduces the mean number of photons in a state without physically removing them. In this study, we propose a method that utilizes a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for ZPS operation to enhance flexibility and control while improving efficiency. This modification demonstrates a high probability of success, which increases with phase modification. We discuss how the proposed ZPS scheme manipulates the Mandel factor of quantum states and note an increase in both the photon number statistics and probabilities using our approach. Furthermore, we explore the potential applications of this method in noiseless loss suppression (NLS) by applying the ZPS as noiseless attenuation to input Schrödinger cat states and squeezed vacuum states. Squeezing in the $x$-quadrature improved by approximately 17.28%. Finally, we applied ZPS to NLS in entanglement transmission and observed an improvement of 4.53% in entanglement negativity with the well-known ZPS scheme, whereas the proposed ZPS scheme showed a significant improvement of 40.83 %. The proposed ZPS scheme has potential applications in various fields of quantum information technology.