Quantum Illumination and Imaging

Both the contrast and signal to noise of an image can be degraded by the presence of background light and/or sensor noise. One approach to overcoming this degradation is through the use of a photon pair sources, sensitive cameras and the application of quantum illumination protocols. We are developing a full-field imaging system using one such pair source and quantum illumination. Key to our approach is the use of an electron-multiplying CCD camera and appropriate processing of its analogue data output as a spatially resolved detection of photon pairs. To improve upon the EMCCD camera technology we are working in close partnership with Andor.



Importantly, the quantum illumination protocol differs from many quantum schemes in that the advantage is maintained even in the presence of noise and loss. We achieve a significant rejection of background light and an image contrast improvement, which is resilient to both a structured optical background and transmission losses. 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 in biological application and quantum LIDAR for autonomous vehicles.



This work falls within the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme and is an EPSRC thematic area.