LADAR resolution improvement using receivers enhanced with squeezed-vacuum injection and phase-sensitive amplification

The use of quantum resources—squeezed-vacuum injection (SVI) and noise-free phase-sensitive amplification (PSA)—at the receiver of a soft-aperture homodyne-detection LAser Detection And Ranging (LADAR) system is shown to afford significant improvement in the receiver's spatial resolution. This improvement originates from the potential for SVI to ameliorate the loss of high-spatial-frequency information about a target or target complex that is due to soft-aperture attenuation in the LADAR's entrance pupil, and the value of PSA in realizing that potential despite inefficiency in the LADAR's homodyne detection system. We show this improvement quantitatively by calculating lower error rates—in comparison with those of a standard homodyne detection system—for a one-target versus two-target hypothesis test. We also exhibit the effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement provided by SVI and PSA in simulated imagery.

[1]  C. Caves.  Quantum Mechanical Noise in an Interferometer , 1981 .

[2]  Y. Weinstein,et al.  Use of maximally entangled N-photon states for practical quantum interferometry , 2008 .

[3]  Y. S. Weinstein,et al.  On the use of photonic N00N states for practical quantum interferometry , 2006 .

[4]  Gregory R. Osche.  Optical Detection Theory for Laser Applications , 2002 .

[5]  J H Shapiro,et al.  Imaging and target detection with a heterodyne-reception optical radar. , 1981, Applied optics.

[6]  Premjeet Kumar,et al.  Estimation of the spatial bandwidth of an optical parametric amplifier with plane-wave pump , 2009 .

[7]  Saikat Guha,et al.  Ultimate channel capacity of free-space optical communications (Invited) , 2005 .

[8]  H. Chernoff.  A Measure of Asymptotic Efficiency for Tests of a Hypothesis Based on the sum of Observations , 1952 .

[9]  J. Shapiro.  The Quantum Theory of Optical Communications , 2009, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[10]  Abrams,et al.  Quantum interferometric optical lithography: exploiting entanglement to beat the diffraction limit , 1999, Physical review letters.

[11]  Kolobov,et al.  Noiseless amplification of optical images. , 1995, Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.

[12]  Moore,et al.  Spin squeezing and reduced quantum noise in spectroscopy. , 1992, Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.

[13]  Premjeet Kumar,et al.  NOISELESS OPTICAL AMPLIFICATION OF IMAGES , 1999 .

[14]  S. Lloyd,et al.  Quantum metrology. , 2005, Physical review letters.