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arXiv:2112.10335 · Scientific Reports

Theoretical studies on quantum imaging with time-integrated single-photon detection under realistic experimental conditions

Byeong-Yoon Go, Changhyoup Lee, Kwang-Geol Lee

Published Mar 29, 2022• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study a quantum-enhanced differential measurement scheme that uses quantum probes and single-photon detectors to measure a minute defect in the absorption parameter of an analyte under investigation. For the purpose, we consider two typical non-classical states of light as a probe, a twin-Fock state and a two-mode squeezed vacuum state. Their signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) that quantifies the capability of detecting the defect are compared with a corresponding classical imaging scheme that employs a coherent state input. A quantitative comparison is made in terms of typical system imperfections such as photon loss and background noise that are common in practice. It is shown that a quantum enhancement in SNR can be described generally by the Mandel Q-parameter and the noise-reduction-factor, which characterize an input state that is incident to the analyte. We thereby identify the conditions under which the quantum enhancement remains and can be further increased. We expect our study to provide a guideline for improving the SNR in quantum imaging experiments employing a differential measurement scheme with time-integrated single-photon detectors.

DOI
10.1038/s41598-022-09186-w

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We study a quantum-enhanced differential measurement scheme that uses quantum probes and single-photon detectors to measure a minute defect in the absorption parameter of an analyte under investigation. For the purpose, we consider two typical non-classical states of light as a probe, a twin-Fock state and a two-mode squeezed vacuum state. Their signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) that quantifies the capability of detecting the defect are compared with a corresponding classical imaging scheme that employs a coherent state input. A quantitative comparison is made in terms of typical system imperfections such as photon loss and background noise that are common in practice. It is shown that a quantum enhancement in SNR can be described generally by the Mandel Q-parameter and the noise-reduction-factor, which characterize an input state that is incident to the analyte. We thereby identify the conditions under which the quantum enhancement remains and can be further increased. We expect our study to provide a guideline for improving the SNR in quantum imaging experiments employing a differential measurement scheme with time-integrated single-photon detectors.
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The development of new techniques to improve measurements is crucial for all sciences. By employing quantum systems as sensors to probe some physical property of interest allows the application of quantum resources, such as coherent superpositions and quantum correlations, to increase measurement precision. Here we experimentally investigate a scheme for quantum target detection based on linear optical measurement devices, when the object is immersed in unpolarized background light. By comparing the quantum (polarization-entangled photon pairs) and the classical (separable polarization states) strategies, we found that the quantum strategy provides us an improvement over the classical one in our experiment when the signal-to-noise ratio is greater than 1/40, or about 16 dB of noise. This is in constrast to quantum target detection considering nonlinear optical detection schemes, which have shown resilience to extreme amounts of noise. A theoretical model is developed which shows that, in this linear-optics context, the quantum strategy suffers from the contribution of multiple background photons. This effect does not appear in our classical scheme. By improving the two-photon detection electronics, it should be possible to achieve a polarization-based quantum advantage for a signal-to-noise ratio that is close to 1/400 for current technology.
Optical quantum metrology uses specially-prepared states of light to probe sensitive samples. Choosing a suitable probe state allows one to extract more information per probe photon about an unknown parameter than is possible using any classical technique. In effect, these techniques improve the sensitivity of the measurement whenever the number of probe photons is constrained in some way. This thesis presents experimental and theoretical results on the use of pairs of time-frequency entangled photons in precision measurements. It begins with an overview of necessary background knowledge about quantum optics and quantum information. This is followed by a theoretical discussion on the estimation of a single delay using two-photon interference. We show that constraints on the probe photon's bandwidth complicate the measurement problem, requiring suitable optimization of the two-photon quantum state to avoid losing precision. We then consider the use of two-photon interference for linear spectroscopic measurements. Linear spectroscopy relates the absorption and phase spectrum of a sample to unknown electronic parameters. We describe a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrating that two-photon interferometric spectroscopy can be used for simultaneously measurement of both absorption and phase. This is followed by an information-theoretic discussion of the precision of this technique. For low losses, we show that the method provides phase sensitivity similar to classical interferometry while approaching the optimal absorption precision of any possible measurement. If the absorption and phase values are both related to a single unknown parameter, then our technique provides improved sensitivity to this parameter compared to both classical measurements and other quantum techniques in the presence of realistic levels of loss. We conclude with a discussion of quantum-optical coherence tomography, which is a two-photon interferometric method for determining the material structure of a sample. We present an ongoing experiment which aims to apply the method to tissue-like samples, where the quantum measurement is limited by a poor signal-to-noise ratio. Preliminary results demonstrate that this noise can be largely reduced by suitable frequency-domain filtering. This allows us to precisely determine the position of a scattering center using a few hundred detected photon pairs despite the presence of large amounts of noise. We follow this with a theoretical discussion of signal artifacts which are known to complicate the measured interferogram. We show these artifacts are due to a distinct interferometric effect, which can be distinguished from the signal of interest using the relative time delay between detected photons. We conclude with a brief discussion on possible techniques for artifact removal.
Twin entangled beams produced by single-pass parametric down-conversion (PDC) offer the opportunity to detect weak amount of absorption with an improved sensitivity with respect to standard techniques which make use of classical light sources. We propose a differential measurement scheme which exploits the spatial quantum correlation of type-II PDC to image a weak amplitude object with a sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit imposed by shot noise. By applying a quantitative numerical model to a specific PDC system (a type-II beta-barium borate crystal), we are able to identify conditions in parameter space suitable for a substantial enhancement of the imaging sensitivity, and we investigate the robustness of this enhancement against experimental imperfections.
Non-local effects have the potential to radically move forward quantum enhanced imaging to provide an advantage over classical imaging not only in laboratory environments but practical implementation. In this work, we demonstrate a 43dB higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using a quantum enhanced LiDAR based on time-frequency entanglement compared with a classical phase-insensitive quantum imaging system. Our system can tolerate more than 3 orders of magnitude higher noise than classical single-photon counting quantum imaging systems before detector saturation with a detector dead time of 25ns. To achieve these advantages, we use non-local cancellation of dispersion to take advantage of the strong temporal correlations in photon pairs in spite of the orders of magnitude larger detector temporal uncertainty. We go on to incorporate this scheme with purpose-built scanning collection optics to image non-reflecting targets in an environment with noise.