Metasurface imaging with entangled photons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how entangled and correlated photons can be used to control and enhance imaging on plasmonic metasurfaces, enabling nonlocal pattern determination and secure imaging functionalities.

Contribution

It introduces novel quantum imaging techniques with metasurfaces using entangled photons, enabling nonlocal pattern recognition and image security.

Findings

Correlated photons enable nonlocal pattern determination.

Entangled photons allow images to be visible only under specific illumination.

Quantum imaging with metasurfaces can advance quantum information protocols.

Abstract

Plasmonics and metamaterials have recently been shown to allow the control and interaction with non-classical states of light, a rather counterintuitive finding given the high losses typically encountered in these systems. Here, we demonstrate a range of functionalities that are allowed with correlated and entangled photons that are used to illuminate multiple, overlaid patterns on plasmonic metasurfaces. Correlated photons allow to nonlocally determine the pattern that is imaged or, alternatively to un-scramble an image that is otherwise blurred. Entangled photons allow a more important functionality whereby the images imprinted on the metasurface are individually visible only when illuminated with one of the entangled photons. Correlated single photon imaging of functional metasurfaces could therefore promise advances towards the use of nanostructured subwavelength thin devices in quantum information protocols.