Identification of light sources using machine learning
Abstract
The identification of light sources represents a task of utmost importance for the development of multiple photonic technologies. Over the last decades, the identification of light sources as diverse as sunlight, laser radiation, and molecule fluorescence has relied on the collection of photon statistics or the implementation of quantum state tomography. In general, this task requires an extensive number of measurements to unveil the characteristic statistical fluctuations and correlation properties of light, particularly in the low-photon flux regime. In this article, we exploit the self-learning features of artificial neural networks and the naive Bayes classifier to dramatically reduce the number of measurements required to discriminate thermal light from coherent light at the single-photon level. We demonstrate robust light identification with tens of measurements at mean photon numbers below one. In terms of accuracy and number of measurements, the methods described here dramatically outperform conventional schemes for characterization of light sources. Our work has important implications for multiple photonic technologies such as light detection and ranging, and microscopy.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.5133846
Entities
People
- Aidan Lambert
- Amir Javaid
- Armando Pérez-Leija
- Chao Dong
- Chenglong You
- Mario A. Quiroz-Juarez
- Narayan Bhusal
- Omar S. Maganã-loaiza
- Roberto de J. León-Montiel
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencias y Tecnologías
- DGAPA, UNAM
- Louisiana State University
- National Autonomous University of Mexico
- National Science Foundation