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Conference on Information Sciences and Systems

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence as One-Shot Hypothesis Testing

Ian M. George, Xinan Chen, Lav R. Varshney

Published Mar 22, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Both the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) struggle with a strong indeterminacy in what data to look for and when to do so. This has led to attempts at finding both fundamental mathematical limits for SETI as well as benchmarks regarding specific signals. Due to the natural correspondence, previous information-theoretic work has been formulated in terms of communication between extraterrestrial and human civilizations. In this work, we instead formalize SETI as a detection problem, specifically (quantum) one-shot asymmetric hypothesis testing. This framework holds for all detection scenarios-in particular, it is relevant for detection of any technosignature, including quantum mechanical signals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to consider the applicability of SETI for quantum signals. Using this formalism, we are able to unify the analysis of fundamental limits and benchmarking specific signals. To show a distinction between METI and SETI, we show that significantly weaker signals may be useful in detection in comparison to communication. Furthermore, the framework is computationally efficient, so it can be implemented by practicing astrobiologists.

DOI
10.1109/ciss56502.2023.10089645

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Both the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) struggle with a strong indeterminacy in what data to look for and when to do so. This has led to attempts at finding both fundamental mathematical limits for SETI as well as benchmarks regarding specific signals. Due to the natural correspondence, previous information-theoretic work has been formulated in terms of communication between extraterrestrial and human civilizations. In this work, we instead formalize SETI as a detection problem, specifically (quantum) one-shot asymmetric hypothesis testing. This framework holds for all detection scenarios-in particular, it is relevant for detection of any technosignature, including quantum mechanical signals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to consider the applicability of SETI for quantum signals. Using this formalism, we are able to unify the analysis of fundamental limits and benchmarking specific signals. To show a distinction between METI and SETI, we show that significantly weaker signals may be useful in detection in comparison to communication. Furthermore, the framework is computationally efficient, so it can be implemented by practicing astrobiologists.
Abstract The modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence began with the seminal publications of Cocconi & Morrison and Schwartz & Townes, who proposed searching for narrowband signals in the radio spectrum and optical laser pulses. Over the last six decades, more than 100 dedicated search programs have targeted these wavelengths, all with null results. All of these campaigns searched for classical communications, that is, for a significant number of photons above a noise threshold, with the assumption of a pattern encoded in time and/or frequency space. I argue that future searches should also target quantum communications. They are preferred over classical communications with regard to security and information efficiency, and they would have escaped detection in all previous searches. The measurement of Fock state photons or squeezed light would indicate the artificiality of a signal. I show that quantum coherence is feasible over interstellar distances and explain for the first time how astronomers can search for quantum transmissions sent by ETI to Earth using commercially available telescopes and receiver equipment.
Since it began \cite{CocconiMorrison}, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has focused on interstellar \emph{classical} communication. Recently, Berera \cite{Berera:2020rpl} pointed out that, at certain frequencies, photon qubits can retain their quantum coherence over interstellar (and even intergalactic) distances, raising the prospect of interstellar \emph{quantum} communication. This is an intriguing possibility, since quantum communication permits certain tasks that would be impossible with classical communication, and allow exponential speed-ups for others. (We suggest some motivations in the interstellar context.) But quantum coherence alone is not sufficient for quantum communication: here, for the first time, we analyze the \emph{quantum capacity} QQQ of an interstellar channel. We point out that, to have non-zero quantum capacity Q>0Q>0Q>0, interstellar communication over a distance LLL must use wavelengths λ<26.5 cmλ< 26.5\,cmλ<26.5cm (to avoid depolarization by the cosmic microwave background), and \emph{enormous} telescopes of effective diameter D>0.78λLD>0.78\sqrt{λL}D>0.78λL​ (to satisfy quantum erasure constraints). For example, for two telescopes of diameter DDD on Earth and Proxima Centauri, this implies D>100 kmD>100\,kmD>100km! This is a technological threshold that remains to be crossed in order for reliable one-way quantum communication to become possible, and suggests a fundamental new resolution of the Fermi paradox.
Discovering exoplanets in orbit around distant stars via direct imaging is fundamentally impeded by the combined effect of optical diffraction and photon shot noise under extreme star-planet contrast. Coronagraphs strive to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of exoplanet signatures by optically suppressing light from the host star while preserving light from the exoplanet. However, it is unclear whether direct-imaging coronagraphs constitute an optimal strategy for attaining fundamental limits relevant to exoplanet discovery. In this work, we first review the quantum information limits of exoplanet detection and localization characterized by (1) the quantum Chernoff exponent for symmetric hypothesis testing, (2) the quantum relative entropy for asymmetric hypothesis testing, and (3) the quantum Fisher information matrix for multiparameter estimation. We demonstrate that coronagraphs designed to completely suppress light in the fundamental mode of the telescope, while perfectly transmitting higher-order orthogonal modes, indeed achieve these limits in the regime of high star-planet contrasts. Furthermore, we formulate coronagraphs as quantum channels, thus generalizing the classical framework of coronagraphy to the quantum setting. Using this framework, we compare the information-theoretic performance of leading coronagraph designs against the quantum limits. Our analysis indicates that quantum-optimal coronagraphs offer enhanced information efficiency in the subdiffraction regime compared to leading coronagraph designs and may significantly expand the domain of accessible exoplanets.
In this thesis we investigate the theory of quantum hypothesis testing and its potential applications for the new area of quantum technologies. We first consider the asymmetric formulation of quantum hypothesis testing where the aim is to minimize the probability of false negatives and the main tool is provided by the quantum Hoeffding bound. In this context we provide a general recipe for computing this bound in the most important scenario for continuous variable quantum information, that of Gaussian states. We then study both asymmetric and symmetric quantum hypothesis testing in the context of quantum channel discrimination. Here we show how the use of quantum-correlated light can enhance the detection of small variations of transmissivity in a sample of photodegrabable material, while a classical source of light either cannot retrieve information or would destroy the sample. This non-invasive quantum technique might be useful to realize in-vivo and real-time probing of very fragile biological samples, such as DNA or RNA. We also show that the same principle can be exploited to build next-generation memories for the confidential storage of confidential data, where information can be read only by well-tailored sources of entangled light.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) was established to gather and analyze radio signals from space in an effort to detect signs of advanced civilizations that may possibly exist elsewhere in the cosmos. A two-dimensional spectrogram is created using time-series raw data obtained from the Allen telescope. Rigorous data analysis has revealed that the SETI image data set is highly non-separable and challenging. In this paper, we suggest the use of a Hybrid Quantum-Classical convolutional Neural network (HQCNN) using a Quantum node serving to extract intricate features of SETI radio images that are being classified with classical convolutional Neural Network. We also generalized the combination of quantum gates in the Quantum node to improvise the performance of HQCNN. Quantum superposition and entanglement properties of Quantum computers render it feasible to comprehend the basic relationships in the data set more precisely than with traditional Machine Learning and Deep Learning techniques. In this context, with the notion of leveraging the computational benefit of an HQCNN, we, therefore, treated this challenging task as binary classification and filtered any two classes from the primary data set. The experimental analysis was executed in the Google Collaboratory platform with the Python packages such as Pennylane, Keras, and TensorFlow. To validate the outcomes, the HQCNN model is contrasted with various classical Deep learning models in terms of diverse performance metrics. The proposed model outperforms the other models in categorizing Allen Telescope data with the highest accuracy of 90.19% while utilizing a very small portion of the original data set, which motivates further research into the use of Quantum Machine Learning algorithms for signal processing tasks.
It is proposed to search for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) at a wavelength of 1.315 μm of the laser 2 P 1/2 → 2 P 3/2 transition in the atomic iodine, which can be used for this purpose as the natural frequency reference. The search at this wavelength is promising because active quantum filters (AQFs) with the quantum sensitivity limit have been developed for this wavelength, which are capable of receiving laser signals, consisting of only a few photons, against the background of emission from a star under study. In addition, high-power iodine lasers emitting diffraction-limited radiation at 1.315 μm have been created, which highly developed ETI also can have. If a ETI sends in our direction a diffraction-limited 10-ns, 1-kJ laser pulse with the beam diameter of 10 m, a receiver with an AQF mounted on a ten-meter extra-atmospheric optical telescope can detect this signal at a distance of up to 300 light years, irrespective of the ETI position on the celestial sphere. The realisation of the projects for manufacturing optical telescopes of diameter 30 m will increase the research range up to 2700 light years. A weak absorption of the 1.315-μm radiation in the Earth atmosphere (the signal is attenuated by less than 20%) allows the search for ETI signals by using ground telescopes equipped with adaptive optical systems.