Quantum illumination versus coherent-state target detection
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Shapiro-2009-Quantum illumination versus coherent-state.pdf
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Author(s) •
Shapiro, Jeffrey H.
Lloyd, Seth
Date Issued
June 2009
Journal
New Journal of Physics
Publisher
Institute of Physics Publishing
Citation
Shapiro, Jeffrey H, and Seth Lloyd. “Quantum Illumination Versus Coherent-state Target Detection.” New Journal of Physics 11.6 (2009): 063045. Web.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
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.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/11/6/063045