Phase super-sensitivity is obtained when the sensitivity in a phase measurement goes beyond the quantum shot noise limit, whereas super-resolution is obtained when the interference fringes in an interferometer are narrower than half the input wavelength. Here we show experimentally that these two features can be simultaneously achieved using a relatively simple setup based on Gaussian states and homodyne measurement. Using 430 photons shared between a coherent and a squeezed vacuum state, we demonstrate a 22-fold improvement in the phase resolution, while we observe a 1.7-fold improvement in the sensitivity. In contrast to previous demonstrations of super-resolution and super-sensitivity, this approach is fully deterministic.

In all practical communication channels, the code word consists of Gaussian states and the measurement strategy is often a Gaussian detector such as homodyning or heterodyning. We investigate the communication performance using a phase-conjugated alphabet and joint Gaussian detection in a phase-insensitive amplifying channel. We find that a communication scheme consisting of a phase-conjugating alphabet of coherent states and a joint detection strategy significantly outperforms a standard coherent-state strategy based in individual detection. Moreover, we show that the performance can be further enhanced by using entanglement and that the performance is completely independent of the gain of the phase-insensitively amplifying channel.