Not all pure entangled states are useful for sub-shot-noise interferometry

We investigate the connection between the shot-noise limit in linear interferometers and particle entanglement. In particular, we ask whether sub-shot-noise sensitivity can be reached with all pure entangled input states of N particles if they can be optimized with local operations. Results on the optimal local transformations allow us to show that for N=2 all pure entangled states can be made useful for sub-shot-noise interferometry while for N>2 this is not the case. We completely classify the useful entangled states available in a bosonic two-mode interferometer. We apply our results to several states, in particular to multiparticle singlet states and to cluster states. The latter turn out to be practically useless for sub-shot-noise interferometry. Our results are based on the Cramer-Rao bound and the Fisher information. ©2010 The American Physical Society