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arXiv:1906.05331

Twin-beam sub-shot-noise raster-scanning microscope with a hybrid detection scheme

Javier Sabines-Chesterking, Alex R. McMillan, Paul‐Antoine Moreau, Siddarth Koduru Joshi, Sebastian Knauer, Johnston, E., John Rarity, Jonathan C. F. Matthews

Published Jun 12, 2019• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

By exploiting the quantised nature of light, we demonstrate a sub-shot-noise scanning optical transmittance microscope. Our microscope demonstrates, with micron scale resolution, a factor of improvement in precision of 1.76(9) in transmittance estimation gained per probe photon relative to an optimal classical version at the same optical power. This would allow us to observe photosensitive samples with nearly twice the precision,without sacrificing image resolution or increasing optical power to improve signal-to-noise ratio. Our setup uses correlated twin-beams produced by parametric down-conversion, and a hybrid detection scheme comprising photon-counting-based feed-forward and a highly efficient CCD camera.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1906.05331

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The optical shot-noise limit of a laser beam represents the classical limit in precision and signal to noise ratio achievable in optical sensors and imaging systems. It is known that quantum states of light, such as squeezed light and quantum correlated twin beams can be used to enhance precision and signal to noise ratio to beyond this limit. This promises optical sensors with fundamentally superior performance to the state of the art. While quantum-enhanced signal to noise ratio has been demonstrated with macroscopic powers of squeezed probe beam, demonstrations of quantum enhanced precision have remained at extremely low powers of light (femto-Watts). Here we will give examples where increasing SNR with quantum light is not sufficient to increase precision and we will review proof of principle experiments that have demonstrated sub shot noise precision, including for absorption spectroscopy and imaging. We will also report our efforts to achieve this sub-shot-noise precision performance for transmission measurement with ~0.1mW of average probe power, equating to ~10W peak power in a pulsed experiment. Time permitting, we will discuss how integrated optics and integrated electronics enables 10s GHz bandwidth in the detection of squeezed light, for integrated quantum sensor technology.
Sub-Shot Noise quantum imaging is a novel quantum method allowing in principle to recover the image of a weak absorbing object, even if illuminated by a low photon flux, with a signal to noise ratio larger than classical imaging techniques. Here we present the first realization of a genuine quantum imaging schemes exploiting correlation of twin beams produced by Parametric Down conversion. We compare its performances with respect to the corresponding classical scheme, showing a clear improvement of the sensitivity in the reconstruction of the absorbtion profile of a weak object.
We demonstrate sub-shot-noise photon-number correlations in a (temporal) multimode mesoscopic ($\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{3}$ detected photons) twin beam produced by picosecond-pulsed spontaneous nondegenerate parametric down-conversion. We have separately detected the signal and idler distributions of photons collected in twin coherence areas and found that the variance of the photon-count difference goes below the shot-noise limit by 3.25dB3.25\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{dB}3.25dB. The number of temporal modes contained in the twin beam, as well as the size of the twin coherence areas, depends on the pump intensity. Our scheme is based on spontaneous down-conversion and thus does not suffer from limitations due to the finite gain of the parametric process. Twin beams are also used to demonstrate the conditional preparation of a nonclassical (sub-Poissonian) state.