Quantum-enhanced transmittance sensing
Zihao Gong
Abstract:
We consider the problem of estimating unknown transmittance of a target bathed in thermal background light. As quantum estimation theory yields the fundamental limits, we employ lossy thermal noise bosonic channel model, which describes sensor-target interaction quantum mechanically in many practical active-illumination systems (e.g., using emissions at optical, microwave, or radio frequencies). We prove that quantum illumination using two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) states asymptotically achieves minimal quantum Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) over all quantum states (not necessarily Gaussian) in the limit of small input photon number. We characterize the optimal receiver structure for TMSV input and show its advantage over other receivers using both analysis and Monte Carlo simulation.