Quantum Illumination: A Laboratory Investigation

Quantum illumination is an idea for detection of targets in the presence of a noisy background using a photon pair that is entangled in some degree of freedom, such as frequency. This paper provides a simple and illustrative proof-of-concept setup of a quantum illumination investigation. Detection and imaging is investigated in the optical regime using a correlated source and the performance of classical illumination and quantum illumination are compared for detection and imaging experiments. The quantum advantage is demonstrated in the acquired data and possible application spaces and technological requirements are identified for developing practical systems.