Heralded Non-Gaussian Squeezed-State Inputs for Parity-Detection SU(1,1) Interferometry

Abstract

Non-Gaussian operations can reshape the photon statistics of continuous-variable probes, but their metrological advantage is meaningful only when heralding probability and photon-number resources are counted consistently. We compare photon subtraction, photon addition, and photon catalysis as input-side heralding operations in a balanced SU(1,1) interferometer with parity detection. A unified finite-transmissivity map supplies closed conditional moments and the corresponding quantum Fisher information at arbitrary operation order; internal loss is absorbed into a single effective parity observable whose lossless limit recovers the ideal pulled-back measurement. At fixed preparation parameters, single-photon subtraction and addition improve the conditional phase information over the Gaussian reference across most of the high-transmissivity regime, while multi-photon catalysis opens useful low-transmissivity windows. However, when the coherent--squeezed allocation is independently optimized at fixed conditional-probe energy and fixed interferometer gain, the success-weighted Fisher information of all three non-Gaussian operations remains below the optimized Gaussian benchmark. This conclusion is subject to the tested constraints: single-photon operations, a coherent-plus-squeezed-vacuum Gaussian family, fixed gain, and parity readout. Photon catalysis separately generates a conditional branch with high local quantum Fisher information that dark-point parity extracts poorly, identifying a measurement mismatch rather than a state-preparation failure. The result draws a sharp boundary between conditional non-Gaussian enhancement and practically available precision under explicitly stated resource constraints.