  The presence of loss limits the precision of an approach to phase measurement
using maximally entangled states, also referred to as NOON states. A
calculation using a simple beam-splitter model of loss shows that, for all
nonzero values L of the loss, phase measurement precision degrades with
increasing number N of entangled photons for N sufficiently large. For L above
a critical value of approximately 0.785, phase measurement precision degrades
with increasing N for all values of N. For L near zero, phase measurement
precision improves with increasing N down to a limiting precision of
approximately 1.018 L radians, attained at N approximately equal to 2.218/L,
and degrades as N increases beyond this value. Phase measurement precision with
multiple measurements and a fixed total number of photons N_T is also examined.
For L above a critical value of approximately 0.586, the ratio of phase
measurement precision attainable with NOON states to that attainable by
conventional methods using unentangled coherent states degrades with increasing
N, the number of entangled photons employed in a single measurement, for all
values of N. For L near zero this ratio is optimized by using approximately
N=1.279/L entangled photons in each measurement, yielding a precision of
approximately 1.340 sqrt(L/N_T) radians.
