The signal half of an entangled twin beam, generated using spontaneous parametric downconversion, interrogates a region of space that is suspected of containing a target and has high loss and high (entanglement-breaking) background noise. A joint measurement is performed on the returned light and the idler beam that was retained at the transmitter. An optimal quantum receiver, whose implementation is not yet known, was shown to achieve 6 dB gain in the error-probability exponent relative to that achieved with a single coherent-state (classical) laser transmitter and the optimum receiver. We present two structured optical receivers that achieve up to 3 dB gain in the error exponent over that attained with the classical sensor. These are designs of quantum-optical sensors for target detection, which can be readily implemented in a proof-of-concept experiment, that appreciably outperform the best classical sensor in the low-signal-brightness, high-loss, and high-noise operating regime.
The signal half of an entangled twin beam, generated using spontaneous parametric downconversion, interrogates a region of space that is suspected of containing a target and has high loss and high (entanglement-breaking) background noise. A joint measurement is performed on the returned light and the idler beam that was retained at the transmitter. An optimal quantum receiver, whose implementation is not yet known, was shown to achieve 6 dB gain in the error-probability exponent relative to that achieved with a single coherent-state (classical) laser transmitter and the optimum receiver. We present two structured optical receivers that achieve up to 3 dB gain in the error exponent over that attained with the classical sensor. These are designs of quantum-optical sensors for target detection, which can be readily implemented in a proof-of-concept experiment, that appreciably outperform the best classical sensor in the low-signal-brightness, high-loss, and high-noise operating regime.
An optical transmitter that uses entangled light generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC), in conjunction with an optimal quantum-optical receiver (whose implementation is not yet known) is in principle capable of obtaining up to a 6 dB gain in the error-probability exponent over the optimum-reception un-entangled coherent-state lidar to detect the presence of a far-away target subject to entanglement-breaking loss and noise in the free-space link . We present an explicit design of a structured quantum-illumination receiver, which in conjunction with the SPDC transmitter is shown to achieve up to a 3 dB error-exponent advantage over the classical sensor. Apart from being fairly feasible for a proof-of-principle demonstration, this is to our knowledge the first structured design of a quantum-optical sensor for target detection that outperforms the comparable best classical lidar sensor appreciably in a low-brightness, lossy and noisy operating regime.
An optical transmitter irradiates a target region containing a bright thermal-noise bath in which a low-reflectivity object might be embedded. The light received from this region is used to decide whether the object is present or absent. The performance achieved using a coherent-state transmitter is compared with that of a quantum-illumination transmitter, i.e., one that employs the signal beam obtained from spontaneous parametric down-conversion. By making the optimum joint measurement on the light received from the target region together with the retained spontaneous parametric down-conversion idler beam, the quantum-illumination system realizes a 6 dB advantage in the error-probability exponent over the optimum reception coherent-state system. This advantage accrues despite there being no entanglement between the light collected from the target region and the retained idler beam.
An active optical sensor probes a region of free space that is engulfed in bright thermal noise to determine the presence (or absence) of a weakly reflecting target. The returned light (which is just thermal noise if no target is present, and thermal noise plus a weak reflection of the probe beam if a target is present) is measured and processed by a receiver and a decision is made on whether a target is present. It has been shown that generating an entangled pair of photons (which is a highly nonclassical state of light), using one photon as the probe beam and storing the other photon for comparison to the returned light, has superior performance to the traditional classical-light (coherent-state) target detection sensors. An entangled-photon transmitter and optimal receiver combination can yield up to a factor of 4 (i.e., 6 dB) gain in the error-probability exponent over a coherent state transmitter and optimal receiver combination, in a highly lossy and noisy scenario (when both sensors have the same number of transmitted photons). However, the receiver that achieves this advantage is not known. One structured receiver can close half of the 6-dB gap (i.e., a 3-dB improvement). It is based on phase-conjugating the returned light, then performing dual-balanced difference detection with the stored half of the entangled-photon pair. Active optical sensors are of tremendous value to NASA s missions. Although this work focuses on target detection, it can be extended to imaging (2D, 3D, hyperspectral, etc.) scenarios as well, where the image quality can be better than that offered by traditional active sensors. Although the current work is theoretical, NASA s future missions could benefit significantly from developing and demonstrating this capability. This is an optical receiver design whose components are, in principle, all implementable. However, the work is currently entirely theoretical. It is necessary to: 1. Demonstrate a bench-top proof of the theoretical principle, 2. Create an operational prototype off-the-bench, and 3. Build a practical sensor that can fly in a mission.
Abstract. Loss and noise quickly destroy quantum entanglement. Nevertheless, recent work has shown that a quadrature-entangled light source can reap a substantial performance advantage over all classical-state sources of the same average transmitter power in scenarios whose loss and noise makes them entanglement breaking [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], standoff target-detection being an example. In this paper, we make a first step in extending this quantum illumination paradigm to the optical imaging domain, viz., to obtain better spatial resolution for standoff optical sensing. Our canonical imaging scenario—restricted, for simplicity, to one transverse dimension—is taken to be that of resolving one versus two closely-spaced in-phase specular point targets. We show that an entangled-state transmitter, which uses continuous-wave-pumped spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC), achieves an error-probability exponent that exceeds that of all classical-state transmitters of the same average power. Using these error-exponent results, we find the ultimate spatial-resolution limits for coherent-state and SPDC imaging systems that use their respective quantum-optimal receivers, thus quantifying the latter’s spatial-resolution advantage over the former. We also propose a structured optical receiver that is ideally capable of harnessing 3 dB (of the full 6 dB) gain in the error-probability exponent achievable by the SPDC transmitter and its quantum-optimal receiver.
Abstract Quantum target detection aims to utilise quantum technologies to achieve performances in target detection not possible through purely classical means. Quantum illumination is an example of this, based on signal–idler entanglement, promising a potential 6 dB advantage in error exponent over its optimal classical counterpart. So far, receiver designs achieving this optimal reception remain elusive with many proposals based on Gaussian processes appearing unable to utilise quantum information contained within Gaussian state sources. This paper considers the employment of a noiseless linear amplifier at the detection stage of a quantum illumination-based quantum target detection protocol. Such a non-Gaussian amplifier offers a means of probabilistically amplifying an incoming signal without the addition of noise. Considering symmetric hypothesis testing, the quantum Chernoff bound is derived and limits on detection error probability is analysed for both the two-mode squeezed vacuum state and the coherent state classical benchmark. Our findings show that in such a scheme the potential quantum advantage is amplified even in regimes where quantum illumination alone offers no advantage, thereby extending its potential use. The same cannot be said for coherent states, whose performances are generally bounded by that without amplification.
Quantum illumination is a quantum sensing protocol primarily used for object detection, which aims to detect the presence of a target with low reflectivity in the free space using quantum light fields. Here we investigate a quantum illumination scheme using an entangled light source by performing non-Gaussian operations on the two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) state in order to reduce the detection error probability and meanwhile improve the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio. We demonstrate that under the same squeezing parameter, the non-Gaussian operations can significantly reduce the detection error rate compared with the original TMSV state. Under the same average signal photon number, both the TMSV states with and without non-Gaussian operations can provide smaller error rate than that of the coherent state. In addition, we consider the balanced homodyne detection on idler and return signal photons as joint measurement and find that non-Gaussian operations can enhance the SNR of target detection by about 6--9 dB compared with that using TMSV. These results here demonstrate the advantage of the non-Gaussian entangled source in quantum illumination protocol and can find potential applications in target detection in noisy environment.