Classical and quantum techniques for photon metrology

Alan L. Migdall

Ashley Lyons

Patrick M. Birchall, Javier Sabines-Chesterking, Jeremy L. O’Brien +2 more

Quantum metrology promises high-precision measurements beyond the capability of any classical techniques, and has the potential to be integral to investigative techniques. However, all sensors must tolerate imperfections if they are to be practical. Here we show that photons with perfectly overlapped modes, which are therefore fully indistinguishable, are not required for quantum-enhanced measurement, and that partially-distinguishable photons do not have to be engineered to mitigate the adverse effects of distinguishability. We quantify the effect of distinguishability on quantum metrology experiments, and report results of an experiment to verify that two- and four-photon states containing partially-distinguishable photons can achieve quantum-enhanced sensitivity with low-visibility quantum interference. This demonstrates that sources producing photons with mixed spectral states can be readily utilized for quantum metrology.

Shigeki Takeuchi

Madhura Ghosh Dastidar, Aprameyan Desikan, Vidya Praveen Bhallamudi

Quantum metrology aims at achieving enhanced performance in measuring unknown parameters by utilizing quantum resources. Thus, quantum metrology is an important application of quantum technologies. Photonic systems can implement these metrological tasks with simpler experimental techniques. We present a scheme for improved parameter estimation by introducing entangled generalized coherent states (EGCS) for photonic quantum metrology. These states show enhanced sensitivity beyond the classical and Heisenberg limits and prove to be advantageous as compared to the entangled coherent and NOON states. Further, we also propose a scheme for experimentally generating certain entangled generalized coherent states with current technology.

Zhimin Shi, Mohammad Mirhosseini, Jessica Margiewicz +3 more

Retrieving the vast amount of information carried by a photon is an enduring challenge in quantum metrology science and quantum photonics research. The transverse spatial state of a photon is a convenient high-dimensional quantum system for study, as it has a well-understood classical analogue as the transverse complex field profile of an optical beam. One severe drawback of all currently available quantum metrology techniques is the need for a time-consuming characterization process, which scales very unfavorably with the dimensionality of the quantum system. Here we demonstrate a technique that directly measures a million-dimensional photonic spatial state in a single setting. Through the arrangement of a weak measurement of momentum and parallel strong measurements of position, the complex values of the entire photon state vector become measurable directly. The dimension of our measured state is approximately four orders of magnitude larger than previously measured. Our work opens up a practical route for characterizing high-dimensional quantum systems in real time. Furthermore, our demonstration also serve as a high-speed, extremely-high-resolution unambiguous complex field measurement technique for diverse classical applications.