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Optics Express

Time alignment quantum illumination based on single real-time coincidence counting

Wen-long Gao, Luping Xu, Hua Zhang

Published Nov 13, 2023• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate an improved quantum illumination protocol based on the time correlation of twin photons, for the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of target detection and signal reconstruction in the strong noise environment. The Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer is applied after the spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process to construct a probing twin-beam in which the photon times are precisely aligned between the beams. At the radar receiver, we put forward a single real-time coincidence counting (SRCC) method on a series of time slices to reconstruct the probe signals of pulse radar and calculate the SNR advantages against the conventional pulse radar, as well as the quantum illumination (QI) protocol. Our main achievements in this research are the realization of real-time detection of quantum information while acquiring a higher SNR than QI and classical illumination (CI) protocols, as well as its demonstration of strong robustness to noise and losses, which also proposes what we believe to be a novel way for quantum target detection.

DOI
10.1364/oe.505809

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We propose and demonstrate an improved quantum illumination protocol based on the time correlation of twin photons, for the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of target detection and signal reconstruction in the strong noise environment. The Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer is applied after the spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process to construct a probing twin-beam in which the photon times are precisely aligned between the beams. At the radar receiver, we put forward a single real-time coincidence counting (SRCC) method on a series of time slices to reconstruct the probe signals of pulse radar and calculate the SNR advantages against the conventional pulse radar, as well as the quantum illumination (QI) protocol. Our main achievements in this research are the realization of real-time detection of quantum information while acquiring a higher SNR than QI and classical illumination (CI) protocols, as well as its demonstration of strong robustness to noise and losses, which also proposes what we believe to be a novel way for quantum target detection.
Quantum radar has recently gained increasing importance in a number of military applications. The estimation accuracy of one-shot quantum illumination events is significant in target detection. However, the accuracy is inevitably deteriorated by measurement noises. The traditional one-shot illumination emits a single photon towards a certain area which thermal noise exists in the path to, and the states of the received photons are hard to distinguish in the following processing. Therefore, a new optical probe source is proposed in this work. The independent detecting unit in the enhanced illumination is comprised of two photons aligned in time by using Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) interferometer. Further, one-shot detection in a general discrete model is realized and it proves a significant promotion in accuracy. The expansion of useful parts in parameter space and the lower minimal error probability for hypothesis testing have been mathematically demonstrated. The accuracy of one-shot detection can be effectively improved by the proposed scheme implying that it possesses great potential applications in quantum illumination and imaging.
In the detection process of classic radars such as radar/lidar, the detection performance will be weakened due to the presence of background noise and loss. The quantum illumination protocol can use the spatial correlation between photon pairs to improve image quality and enhance radar detection performance, even in the presence of loss and noise. Based on this quantum illumination LIDAR, a theoretic scheme is developed for the detection and tracking of moving targets, and the trajectory of the object is analyzed. Illuminated by the quantum light source as Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion (SPDC), an opaque target can be identified from the background in the presence of strong noise. The static objects obtained by classical and quantum illumination are compared, respectively, and the advantages of quantum illumination are verified. The moving objects are taken at appropriate intervals to obtain the images of the moving objects, then the images are visualized as dynamic images, and the three-frame difference method is used to obtain the target contour. Finally, the image is performed by a series of processing on to obtain the trajectory of the target object. Several different motion situations are analyzed separately, and compared with the set object motion trajectory, which proves the effectiveness of the scheme. This scheme has potential practical application value.
A high visibility Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference between two independently prepared photons plays an important role in various photonic quantum information processing. In a standard HOM experiment using photons generated by pulse-pumped spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC), larger detection time windows than the coherence time of photons have been employed for measuring the HOM visibility and/or drawing the HOM dip. If large amounts of stray photons continuously exist within the detection time windows, employing small detection time windows is favorable for reducing the effect of background noises. Especially, such a setup is helpful for the HOM experiment using continuous wave (cw)-pumped SPDC and the time-resolved coincidence measurement. Here we argue that the method for determining the HOM visibility used in the previous cw experiments tends to suffer from distortion arising from biased contribution of the background noises. We then present a new method with unbiased treatment of the cw backgrounds. By using this method, we experimentally demonstrate a high visibility HOM interference of two heralded telecom photons independently generated by SPDC with employing cw pump light. An observed HOM visibility is 0.87 ± 0.04, which is as high as those observed by using pulse-pumped SPDC photons.
We report the quantum-enhanced metal target detection based on quantum illumination, and experimentally verified that quantum illumination still helps low-reflectivity target detection in photon loss scenarios. The results show that the signal-to-noise ratio and target recognition ability of the quantum detection system are more than 10 times stronger than those of the classical detection under the same thermal noise conditions. We believe that the photon-counting based QI protocol, for its robustness to noise and losses, has a huge potentiality to promote the usage of quantum correlated light in real environments.
Quantum illumination has been proposed and demonstrated to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in light detection and ranging (LiDAR). When relying on coincidence detection alone, such a quantum LiDAR is limited by the timing jitter of the detector and suffers from jamming noise. Inspired by the Zou-Wang-Mandel experiment, we design, construct, and validate a quantum induced coherence (QuIC) LiDAR which is inherently immune to ambient and jamming noises. In traditional LiDAR the direct detection of the reflected probe photons suffers from deteriorating SNR for increasing background noise. In QuIC LiDAR we circumvent this obstacle by only detecting the entangled reference photons, whose single-photon interference fringes are used to obtain the distance of the object, while the reflected probe photons are used to erase path information of the reference photons. In consequence, the noise accompanying the reflected probe light has no effect on the detected signal. We demonstrate such noise resilience with both LED and laser light to mimic the background and jamming noise. The proposed method paves a new way of battling noise in precise quantum electromagnetic sensing and ranging.
Backscattered signals are always obscured by the unavoidable channel noise. However, by exploiting quantum physics recent protocols had been developed to enhance the probability of detecting backscattered signals in a very noisy environment [1], [2]. In this paper we propose a new detection scheme that is simpler in nature than the sum frequency receiver that was proposed for the quantum illumination protocol [3]. Signals are generated using spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) and are transmitted via the simple modulation technique of on-off keying (OOK), while the receiver design will rely upon the purely non-classical Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect.