Quantum-limited discrimination of laser light and thermal light
Abstract
Understanding the fundamental sensitivity limit of an optical sensor requires a full quantum mechanical description of the sensing task. In this work, we calculate the fundamental (quantum) limit for discriminating between pure laser light and thermal noise in a photon-starved regime. The Helstrom bound for discrimination error probability for single mode measurement is computed along with error probability bounds for direct detection, coherent homodyne detection and the Kennedy receiver. A generalized Kennedy (GK) receiver is shown to closely approach the Helstrom limit. We present an experimental demonstration of this sensing task and demonstrate a 15.4 dB improvement in discrimination sensitivity over direct detection using a GK receiver and an improvement of 19.4% in error probability over coherent detection.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 24, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1364/oe.417989
Entities
People
- Arunkumar Jagannathan
- Jonathan L. Habif
- Phoebe Amory
- Saikat Guha
- Samuel Gartenstein
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Information Sciences Institute
- Office of Naval Research
- University of Arizona