Quantum illumination with multiple entangled photons

TL;DR

This paper generalizes Lloyd's quantum illumination protocol using entangled three-photon states, improving target detection capabilities and noise resilience, while discussing practical generation challenges and recent technological advances.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical extension of quantum illumination with three-photon entangled states, enhancing detection performance and robustness.

Findings

Reduced time-bandwidth product for same SNR

Lower false positive probability

Resilience against noise and losses

Abstract

In this work, a theoretical generalization of Lloyd's quantum illumination to signal beams described by two entangled photon states is developed. It is shown that the new protocol offers a method to find the range of the target, reduces the size of the required time-bandwidth product to have the same signal to noise ratio than in Lloyd's quantum illumination, has a lower probability of false positive and is resilient against noise and also potentially against losses. However, the generation of the required three photon states for the protocol posses a technical problem for its practical implementation not fully addressed. Recent advances in triple photon generation that can overcome this problem are discussed. Other issues related with the protocol are also considered.