Quantum and Non-local Effects Offer LiDAR over 40dB Advantage

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a quantum-enhanced LiDAR system leveraging non-local effects and time-frequency entanglement, achieving over 40dB advantage in signal-to-noise ratio and robustness against noise, enabling imaging in challenging environments.

Contribution

The work introduces a practical quantum LiDAR system utilizing non-local dispersion cancellation and entanglement, surpassing classical systems in noise tolerance and signal clarity.

Findings

Achieved 43dB lower signal-to-noise ratio compared to classical LiDAR.

Tolerates over 1000 times more noise before detector saturation.

Successfully imaged non-reflecting targets in noisy environments.

Abstract

Non-local effects have the potential to radically move forward quantum enhanced LiDAR to provide an advantage over classical LiDAR not only in laboratory environments but practical implementation. In this work, we demonstrate a 43dB lower signal-to-noise ratio using a quantum enhanced LiDAR based on time-frequency entanglement compared with a classical phase-insensitive LiDAR system. Our system can tolerate more than 3 orders of magnitude higher noise than classical singlephoton counting LiDAR systems before detector saturation. To achieve these advantages, we use non-local cancellation of dispersion to take advantage of the strong temporal correlations in photon pairs in spite of the orders of magnitude larger detector temporal uncertainty. We go on to incorporate this scheme with purpose-built scanning collection optics to image non-reflecting targets in an environment with noise.