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arXiv:2609.04311 · SPIE Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging

Development of quantum technologies for optical/infrared interferometry

John D. Monnier

astro-ph.IMquant-phSubmitted Sep 3, 2026• Announced Sep 7, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Quantum technologies may revolutionize optical interferometry through new means to distribute and preserve electric-field amplitude and phase correlations between widely separated telescopes. After reviewing existing techniques, I survey proposed quantum-sensing and quantum-networking applications and highlight recent laboratory demonstrations of key building blocks. By easing field-transport demands for baselines beyond $\sim$1 km, quantum-enhanced interferometry could enable sub-milliarcsecond imaging and microarcsecond-class differential astrometry. That said, "going quantum" is not a magic shortcut to sensitivity because many of the most compelling science cases remain photon- and turbulence-limited. I therefore emphasize the practical constraints -- loss, bandwidth, coherence time, synchronization, and wavelength limits of quantum interfaces -- that must also be overcome to make these capabilities useful for astronomy, whether deployed on the ground or from space.

Comments
16 pages, 4 figures. Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2026, Copenhagen

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Quantum technologies may revolutionize optical interferometry through new means to distribute and preserve electric-field amplitude and phase correlations between widely separated telescopes. After reviewing existing techniques, I survey proposed quantum-sensing and quantum-networking applications and highlight recent laboratory demonstrations of key building blocks. By easing field-transport demands for baselines beyond ∼\sim∼1 km, quantum-enhanced interferometry could enable sub-milliarcsecond imaging and microarcsecond-class differential astrometry.
That said, "going quantum" is not a magic shortcut to sensitivity because many of the most compelling science cases remain photon- and turbulence-limited. I therefore emphasize the practical constraints -- loss, bandwidth, coherence time, synchronization, and wavelength limits of quantum interfaces -- that must also be overcome to make these capabilities useful for astronomy, whether deployed on the ground or from space.
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Classically, the angular resolution of a telescope is limited by its diffraction limit: the ratio of its observing wavelength to its diameter. Developments in quantum information theory over the past decade have uncovered quantum-optimal measurement methods that enable super-resolution imaging beyond the diffraction limit, and many laboratory-scale demonstrations of these methods have been performed over the past decade, culminating in the recent first on-sky demonstration of quantum-enhanced astronomical imaging. In this Review, we detail the current progress and achievements of these theoretical and experimental results, discuss the astronomical science cases motivating the development of higher resolution telescopes, summarise the technological challenges facing the practical application of quantum imaging technologies to astronomy, and present a vision for the realization of \emph{quantum telescopes} with imaging resolutions orders of magnitude better than current observatories.
Classical optical interferometry requires maintaining live, phase-stable links between telescope stations. This requirement greatly adds to the cost of extending to long baseline separations and limits on baselines will in turn limit the achievable angular resolution. Here we describe a novel type of two-photon interferometer for astrometry, which uses photons from two separate sky sources and does not require an optical link between stations. Such techniques may make large increases in interferometric baselines practical, even by orders of magnitude, with a corresponding improvement in astrometric precision benefiting numerous fields in astrophysics. We tested a benchtop analogue version of the two-source interferometer and unambiguously observe correlated behavior in detections of photon pairs from two thermal light sources, in agreement with theoretical predictions. This work opens new possibilities in future astronomical measurements.
Recent advances in quantum information theory have led to the development of quantum imaging methods that would allow optical interferometers to achieve resolutions surpassing the conventional diffraction limit. The use of quantum technologies also has the potential to create optical interferometer telescopes with baselines of hundreds of kilometers, achieving unprecedented imaging resolution. We present results of laboratory experiments advancing quantum interferometer techniques for astronomy. We demonstrate quantum-optimal imaging of an artificial star-like source using a phase-stabilized 170 km-span optical interferometer, pointing the way to astronomical interferometers with resolution orders of magnitude better than any current telescope, with outstanding applications for studying exoplanets, the formation of star systems, and tests of General Relativity near the event horizon of a black hole.
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Observations using interferometers provide sensitivity to features of images on angular scales much smaller than any single telescope, on the order of Δθ ∼ λ/b where b is the interferometric baseline. Present-day optical interferometers are essentially classical, interfering single photons with themselves. However, there is a new wave of interest in interferometry using multiple photons, whose mechanisms are inherently quantum mechanical, which offer the prospects of increased baselines and finer resolutions among other advantages. We will discuss recent ideas and results for quantum-assisted interferometry using the resource of entangled pairs, and specifically a two-photon amplitude technique aimed at improved precision in astrometry.