Noise-tolerant object detection and ranging using quantum correlations
Date
2022-08-25Source Title
Journal of Optics
Print ISSN
2040-8978
Electronic ISSN
2040-8986
Publisher
Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd.
Volume
24
Issue
10
Pages
1 - 7
Language
English
Type
ArticleItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Imaging, detection and ranging of objects in the presence of significant background noise is a
fundamental challenge in optical sensing. Overcoming the limitations imposed in conventional
methods, quantum light sources show higher resistance against noise in a time-correlation-based
quantum illumination. Here, we introduce the advantage of using not only time correlations but
also polarization correlations in photon pairs in the detection of an object that is embedded in a
noisy background. In this direction, a time- and polarization-correlated photon pair source using
the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process is exploited. We found that the joint
measurement of correlated pairs allows distinguishing the signal from the noise photons and
that leads to an improved signal-to-noise ratio. Our comparative study revealed that using
polarization correlations in addition to time correlations provides improved noise rejection.
Furthermore, we show that polarization correlation allows undoing the detector limitation where
high background often leads to detector saturation.
Keywords
quantum lidarquantum correlation
spontaneous parametric down conversion
single photon detectors