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Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition

Back to sources – the role of losses and coherence in super-resolution imaging revisited

Stanisław Kurdziałek

Published Jan 1, 2022• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The relation between the transmission and the PSF shape of a general imaging system is derived from fundamental quantum mechanics principles. The impact of non-unit transmission on the precision limits in optical imaging is discussed.
DOI
10.1364/quantum.2022.qw4c.5

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The fundamental limit on the precision of the separation estimation between two partially coherent sources is derived. Photon losses, inevitably associated with imperfect imaging, are properly taken into account. We begin our analysis with a simple and common imaging model based on the 4f system. We then show that our results are valid for any passive, linear, translationally invariant optical imaging system. We obtain the expression for the Quantum Fisher Information, which is consistent with the already computed classical Fisher Information and latest experimental work. We also identify the source of discrepancies in the results obtained earlier and show how to correctly interpret them.
The diffraction, or Rayleigh, limit was long thought to determine the ultimate resolving power of optical imaging devices. Using techniques from quantum statistical inference, Tsang et al. [1] demonstrated that this limit can be circumvented, and derived an alternative measurement strategy capable of resolving two incoherent point sources no matter how arbitrarily small their separation is. However, these measurements require perfect knowledge of the sources centroid position, and are extremely sensitive to any source of misalignment about this position [2] , [3] . In this work, we study the problem of super-resolution from a more global point of view.