Suppression of noise in separation estimation of optical sources with spatial-mode demultiplexing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal noise suppression method for spatial mode demultiplexing in optical source separation, enabling superresolution even in noisy conditions by using repeated demultiplexers and specific rotations or parity operations.

Contribution

It develops a formal procedure to effectively decouple noise effects in spatial mode demultiplexing, enhancing superresolution capabilities under realistic noisy scenarios.

Findings

Perfect noise decoupling achieved with repeated demultiplexers and rotations.

Simplified solution using two demultiplexers and a parity operator for displacement noise.

Improved measurement resolution under strong noise correlation.

Abstract

Spatial mode demultiplexing was proved to be a successful tool for estimation of the separation between incoherent sources, allowing for sensitivity much below the Rayleigh limit. However, with the presence of measurement's noise, superresolution brought by this technique deteriorates rapidly. On a formal ground, this can be seen in terms of, so called, Rayleigh curse known from direct imaging, which while being absent for ideal spatial mode demultiplexing, goes back in a noisy scenario. In this article, we develop a formal procedure to suppress the destructive effect of the noise, proposing a procedure effectively working as an error correction. For noise models given by a random unitary channel generated by a polynomial of creation and annihilation operators, we demonstrate that perfect noise decoupling can be reached by repeating the mode demultiplexers and intervening them by a group of rotations, in the limit of a large number of repetitions and small noise strength. For a special case of displacement noise, our solution is simplified: by using the demultiplexer twice, and interlacing it by a parity operator, given that the noise configuration is frozen between the first and the second step, a perfect decoupling can be achieved. This allows for a recovery of superresolution for a special class of noise generated by displacement operators. Furthermore, for a strong noise correlation between these two steps, our protocol provides an improved measurement resolution.