Demonstration of a Reconfigurable Entangled Radiofrequency-Photonic Sensor Network

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a reconfigurable quantum sensor network using continuous-variable entanglement, enhancing distributed radiofrequency sensing capabilities with potential applications in navigation and timing.

Contribution

It introduces and experimentally validates a reconfigurable CV entangled sensor network for distributed RF sensing, linking entanglement structure to quantum advantage.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated a three-node entangled RF sensor network.

Showed reconfiguration of the network to optimize sensing performance.

Established a connection between entanglement structure and quantum sensing advantage.

Abstract

Quantum metrology takes advantage of nonclassical resources such as entanglement to achieve a sensitivity level below the standard quantum limit. To date, almost all quantum-metrology demonstrations are restricted to improving the measurement performance at a single sensor, but a plethora of applications require multiple sensors that work jointly to tackle distributed sensing problems. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a reconfigurable sensor network empowered by continuous-variable (CV) multipartite entanglement. Our experiment establishes a connection between the entanglement structure and the achievable quantum advantage in different distributed sensing problems. The demonstrated entangled sensor network is composed of three sensor nodes each equipped with an electro-optic transducer for the detection of radiofrequency (RF) signals. By properly tailoring the CV multipartite entangled states, the entangled sensor network can be reconfigured to maximize the quantum advantage in distributed RF sensing problems such as measuring the angle of arrival of an RF field. The rich physics of CV multipartite entanglement unveiled by our work would open a new avenue for distributed quantum sensing and would lead to applications in ultrasensitive positioning, navigation, and timing.