We report on two optical realizations of the $1\to 2$ asymmetric phase-covariant cloning machines for polarization states of single photons. The experimental setups combine two-photon interference and tunable polarization filtering, which enables us to control the asymmetry of the cloners. The first scheme involves a special unbalanced bulk beam splitter exhibiting different splitting ratios for vertical and horizontal polarizations, respectively. The second implemented scheme consists of a balanced fiber coupler where photon bunching occurs, followed by a free-space part with polarization filters. With this latter approach we were able to demonstrate very high cloning fidelities which are above the universal cloning limit.

• Received 27 May 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.78.052323