Single-photon sub-Rayleigh precision measurements of a pair of incoherent sources of unequal intensity
arXiv (Cornell University)(2023)
Abstract
Interferometric methods have been recently investigated to achieve
sub-Rayleigh imaging and precision measurements of faint incoherent sources up
to the ultimate quantum limit. Here we consider single-photon imaging of two
point-like emitters of unequal intensity. This is motivated by the fact that
pairs of natural emitters will typically have unequal brightness, as for
example binary star systems and exoplanets. We address the problems of
estimating the transverse separation d and the relative intensity ϵ.
Our theoretical analysis shows that the associated statistical errors are
qualitatively different from the case of equal intensity. We employ multi-plane
light conversion technology to experimentally implement Hermite-Gaussian (HG)
spatial-mode demultiplexing (SPADE), and demonstrate sub-Rayleigh measurement
of two emitters with Gaussian point-spread function. The experimental errors
are comparable with the theoretical bounds. The latter are benchmarked against
direct imaging, yielding a ϵ^-1/2 improvement in the signal-to-noise
ratio, which may be significant when the primary source is much brighter than
the secondary one, as for example for imaging of exoplanets. However, achieving
this improved scaling requires low noise in the implementation of SPADE, which
is typically affected by crosstalk between HG modes.
MoreTranslated text
Key words
incoherent sources,intensity,precision,single-photon,sub-rayleigh
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