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arXiv:2512.15415 · Optical and Quantum Sensing and Precision Metrology II

A short history of Quantum Illumination

Marco Genovese, Ivano Ruo-Berchera

quant-phSubmitted Dec 17, 2025• Announced Dec 18, 2025• 0 citations• Revised Dec 19, 2025 (v2)
v1 · Dec 17, 2025v2 · Dec 19, 2025
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Abstract

Quantum illumination represents one of the most interesting examples of quantum technologies. On the one hand, it can find significant applications; on the other hand, it is one of the few quantum protocols robust against noise and losses. Here we present a short summary of the history of this quantum protocol.
Journal reference
Proceedings Volume 13920, Quantum Sensing, Imaging, and Precision Metrology IV; 139200B (2026)
DOI
10.1117/12.3089668
Comments
to be published in SPIE proc

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Superposition and entanglement, the quintessential characteristics of quantum physics, have been shown to provide communication, computation, and sensing capabilities that go beyond what classical physics will permit. It is natural, therefore, to explore their application to radar, despite the fact that decoherence-caused by the loss and noise encountered in radar sensing-destroys these fragile quantum properties. This paper tells the story of “quantum illumination”, an entanglement-based approach to quantum radar, from its inception to its current understanding. Remarkably, despite loss and noise that destroys its initial entanglement, quantum illumination does offer a target-detection performance improvement over a classical radar of the same transmitted energy. A realistic assessment of that improvement's utility, however, shows that its value is severely limited. Nevertheless, the fact that entanglement can be of value on an entanglement-breaking channel-the meta-lesson of the quantum illumination story-should spur continued research on quantum radar.