Detecting stars and exoplanets with quantum imaging and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) remote sensing to overcome the Rayleigh criterion.
TITLE: Sub-wavelength quantum imaging for astronomy and LIDAR detection
TOPIC: Quantum imaging / metrology
SPEAKER: Dr Zixin Huang, Sydney Quantum Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
AFFILIATION: MQ Center for Quantum Engineering, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
ABSTRACT:
The resolution limit of standard imaging techniques is expressed by the Rayleigh criterion, which states that two point-like sources are difficult to resolve if their transverse separation is smaller than the Rayleigh length. While the criterion is useful in the case of direct detection imaging, other measurement techniques may not be subject to this limitation. Here we consider the use of imaging to estimate the distance between an arbitrary number of incoherent point sources. In the regime of weak signals, a structured measurement obtained by concatenating a linear interferometer with on-off photo-detection is immune to the Rayleigh curse. In this way, we clarify the relationship between imaging and interferometry, and establish the optimality of linear interferometry for an arbitrary number of incoherent sources. We apply these techniques to LIDAR detection as well as exoplanet detection, finding optimal measurements for both these tasks.
In collaboration with Cosmo Lupo and Pieter Kok.
HOSTED BY: Dr Peter Rohde, Centre for Quantum Software and Information, University of Technology Sydney
https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Peter.Rohde
https://www.uts.edu.au/research/centre-quantum-software-and-information
