Quantum illumination versus coherent-state target detection
Entanglement is arguably the key quantum-mechanical resource for improving the performance of communication, precision measurement and computing systems beyond their classical-physics limits. Yet entanglement is fragile, being very susceptible to destruction by the decoherence arising from loss and...
Main Authors: | , |
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Other Authors: | , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Institute of Physics Publishing,
2012-05-04T15:03:33Z.
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get fulltext |
Summary: | Entanglement is arguably the key quantum-mechanical resource for improving the performance of communication, precision measurement and computing systems beyond their classical-physics limits. Yet entanglement is fragile, being very susceptible to destruction by the decoherence arising from loss and noise. Surprisingly, Lloyd (2008 Science 321 1463) recently proved that a very large performance gain accrues from use of entanglement in single-photon target detection within an entanglement-destroying lossy, noisy environment when compared to what can be achieved with unentangled single-photon states. We extend Lloyd's analysis to the full multiphoton input Hilbert space. We show that the performance of Lloyd's single-photon'quantum illumination' system is, at best, equal to that of a coherent-state transmitter of the same average photon number, and may be substantially worse. We demonstrate that the coherent-state system derives its advantage from the coherence between a sequence of weak-single photon on average-transmissions, a possibility that was not allowed for in Lloyd's work. Nevertheless, as shown by Tan et al (2008 Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 253601), quantum illumination may offer a significant, although more modest, performance gain when operation is not limited to the single-photon regime. W. M. Keck Foundation (Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory) United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Quantum Sensors Program) |
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