Gregory T, Moreau P-A, Toninelli E, Padgett M J
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
Sci Adv. 2020 Feb 7;6(6):eaay2652. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay2652. eCollection 2020 Feb.
The contrast of an image can be degraded by the presence of background light and sensor noise. To overcome this degradation, quantum illumination protocols have been theorized that exploit the spatial correlations between photon pairs. Here, we demonstrate the first full-field imaging system using quantum illumination by an enhanced detection protocol. With our current technology, we achieve a rejection of background and stray light of up to 5.8 and also report an image contrast improvement up to a factor of 11, which is resilient to both environmental noise and transmission losses. The quantum illumination protocol differs from usual quantum schemes in that the advantage is maintained even in the presence of noise and loss. Our approach may enable laboratory-based quantum imaging to be applied to real-world applications where the suppression of background light and noise is important, such as imaging under low photon flux and quantum LIDAR.
背景光和传感器噪声的存在会降低图像的对比度。为了克服这种退化，人们提出了利用光子对之间空间相关性的量子照明协议。在这里，我们展示了第一个使用增强检测协议的量子照明全视场成像系统。利用我们目前的技术，我们实现了高达5.8的背景和杂散光抑制，并报告了图像对比度提高了11倍，这对环境噪声和传输损耗都具有弹性。量子照明协议与通常的量子方案不同，因为即使在存在噪声和损耗的情况下，其优势仍然得以保持。我们的方法可能使基于实验室的量子成像能够应用于背景光和噪声抑制很重要的实际应用中，例如在低光子通量下成像和量子激光雷达。
