Absolute calibration of a CCD camera with twin beams

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel quantum correlation-based method for absolute calibration of CCD cameras, achieving high precision in low photon flux regimes by accounting for all noise sources.

Contribution

It introduces a new calibration technique using twin beams and develops a comprehensive measurement model including all loss and noise sources.

Findings

Achieved 0.3% relative uncertainty in calibration.

Demonstrated effectiveness in low photon flux regimes.

Enhanced accuracy for scientific CCD characterization.

Abstract

We report on the absolute calibration of a CCD camera by exploiting quantum correlation. This novel method exploits a certain number of spatial pairwise quantum correlated modes produced by spontaneous parametric-down-conversion. We develop a measurement model taking into account all the possible source of losses and noise that are not related to the quantum efficiency,accounting for all the uncertainty contributions, and we reach the relative uncertainty of 0.3% in low photon flux regime. This represents a significant step forward for the characterizaion of (scientific) CCDs used in mesoscopic light regime.