A quantum-enhanced wide-field phase imager

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum-enhanced wide-field phase imaging technique utilizing hyper-entanglement, achieving high sensitivity over large areas without scanning, demonstrated on biomedical samples, advancing practical quantum imaging.

Contribution

It presents a novel quantum imaging method that combines space-polarization hyper-entanglement with large field-of-view operation, eliminating the need for scanning.

Findings

Quantum-enhanced sensitivity over classical methods.

Successful imaging of biological microarrays.

Scalable approach for high-resolution quantum imaging.

Abstract

Quantum techniques can be used to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio in optical imaging. Leveraging the latest advances in single photon avalanche diode array cameras and multi-photon detection techniques, here we introduce a super-sensitive phase imager, which uses space-polarization hyper-entanglement to operate over a large field-of-view without the need of scanning operation. We show quantum-enhanced imaging of birefringent and non-birefringent phase samples over large areas, with sensitivity improvements over equivalent classical measurements carried out with equal number of photons. The practical applicability is demonstrated by imaging a biomedical protein microarray sample. Our quantum-enhanced phase imaging technology is inherently scalable to high resolution images, and represents an essential step towards practical quantum imaging.