Abstract
We study the role of interference in the process of quantum cloning. We show that in order to achieve better than classical cloning of a qubit no interference is needed. In particular, a large class of symmetric universal 1 2 qubit cloners exists which achieve the optimal average fidelity 5/6 for such machines, without using any interference. We also obtain optimal average fidelities for interference--free cloning in asymmetric situations, and discuss the relation of the quantum cloners found to the Bu\v{z}ek--Hillery quantum cloner.