Quantum copying can increase the practically available information

While it is known that copying a quantum system does not increase the amount of information obtainable about the originals, it may increase the amount available in practice, when one is restricted to imperfect measurements. We present a detection scheme which using imperfect detectors, and possibly noisy quantum copying machines (that entangle the copies), allows one to extract more information from an incoming signal, than with the imperfect detectors alone. The case of single-photon detection with noisy, inefficient detectors and copiers (single controlled-NOT gates in this case) is investigated in detail. The improvement in distinguishability between a photon and vacuum is found to occur for a wide range of parameters, and to be quite robust to random noise. The properties that a quantum copying device must have to be useful in this scheme are investigated.