Anomalous amplification in almost-balanced weak measurement for measuring spin Hall effect of light

Opt Express. 2020 Mar 2;28(5):6408-6416. doi: 10.1364/OE.386017.

Abstract

In this paper, a method to measure the tiny spin splitting of the spin Hall effect of light (SHEL) using the almost-balanced weak measurement (ABWM) is presented. The ABWM technique uses two orthogonal post-selected states to record all of the information, which is a precise measurement method being different from the standard weak measurement (SWM). The theory model to describe the SHEL measurement based on ABWM is established. As results, the ABWM scheme has a larger amplification factor, reaching ∼105, which is nearly one order of magnitude higher than that of the SWM. When the post-selected angle is less than a certain value, the sensitivity and amplification factor of the ABWM scheme are higher than those of the SWM scheme, while the measurement precision and SNR of the ABWM technique are comparable to those of the SWM scheme. This research may have great potential for the precision metrology or sensing field based on the SHEL measurement.