Probing the Quantum Nature of Light

Vincent R. Daria, Michael A. Taylor, Jiří Janoušek +4 more

In this talk, I will show the use of quantum-correlated light to enhance the spatial resolution for probing naturally occurring biological processes in living cells.

Dennis F. Vanderwerf

Muhammad Hamza Waseem, Faizan-e-Ilahi, Muhammad Sabieh Anwar

Maria Maffei, Patrice A. Camati, Alexia Auffèves

We propose an operational scenario to characterize the nature of energy exchanges between two coupled but otherwise isolated quantum systems.Defining work as the component stemming from effective unitary interactions performed by each system on one another, the remnant is stored in the correlations and generally prevents full energy extraction by local operations.Focusing on the case of a qubit coupled to the light field of a waveguide, we establish a bound relating work exchange and local energy extraction when the light statistics is coherent, and that gets violated in the presence of a quantum light pulse.Our results provide operational, energy-based witnesses to probe nonclassical resources.

Daniel F. Walls

Minwei Shi, Sheng Ming, Shuhe Wu +6 more

Abstract Quantum remote sensing utilizes quantum entanglement between the probe and the receiver to enhance the capability to sense a remote target. Quantum illumination is considered as a promising protocol to realize such a quantum technology in an environment of high loss and intense noise. However, the protocol requires an additional on-demand quantum memory, the imperfect performance of which diminishes the quantum advantage and limits the enhancement of sensing. In this paper, we propose a new protocol for quantum remote sensing based on quantum illumination with atom-light entangled interface. Compared to conventional light-only quantum illumination, the proposed protocol utilizes Raman coupling to create a long-lived atomic spin wave entangled with a Stokes light. The atomic spin wave, automatically built-in memory via the Raman coupling, acts as a local reference. The entangled Stokes light is used as a probe to irradiate a remote target. Meanwhile, the returned probe light from target is detected through coupling again to the atomic spin wave. A joint measurement on the returned probe light and spin wave is performed to discriminate the target. A 4 dB quantum enhancement over classical illumination is estimated. The atom-light entangled interface naturally integrates the quantum source, quantum memory, and quantum receiver in a single unit which exhibits great potential to develop highly compact and portable devices for quantum-enhanced remote sensing.