  Spin-photon interfaces (SPIs) are key devices of quantum technologies, aimed
at coherently transferring quantum information between spin qubits and
propagating pulses of polarized light. We study the potential of a SPI for
quantum non demolition (QND) measurements of a spin state. After being
initialized and scattered by the SPI, the state of a light pulse depends on the
spin state. It thus plays the role of a pointer state, information being
encoded in the light's temporal and polarization degrees of freedom. Building
on the fully Hamiltonian resolution of the spin-light dynamics, we show that
quantum superpositions of zero and single photon states outperform coherent
pulses of light, producing pointer states which are more distinguishable with
the same photon budget. The energetic advantage provided by quantum pulses over
coherent ones is maintained when information on the spin state is extracted at
the classical level by performing projective measurements on the light pulses.
The proposed schemes are robust against imperfections in state of the art
semi-conducting devices.
