Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Resolution enhancement of imaging systems by quantum phase amplification

Yanchun Yin, D. French, Igor Jovanovic

Published May 13, 2011• 0 citations

Abstract

A novel quantum phase amplification (QPA) technique is proposed to enhance the spatial resolution of passive imaging systems, without the commensurate increase of the aperture size. The key component of this approach is the production of phase-amplified light, a squeezed state of the electromagnetic field that can be generated in phase-sensitive three-wave mixing (PSTWM). We have established the theoretical basis for QPA using PSTWM and theoretically derived the conditions for the operation of the ubiquitous PSTWM realized by using standard laser technology. In our approach sub-Rayleigh imaging can be explored to perform the super-resolution enhancement of remotely sensed data. We applied the PSTWM to improve the distinguishability of two point sources in several scenarios. In addition, detector segmentation was modeled to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio.

DOI: 10.1117/12.882803

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