Near Infrared Quantum Ghost Spectroscopy for Threats Detection

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the use of quantum ghost spectroscopy in the near infrared to detect threats by exploiting spectral correlations of photon pairs, enabling spectral analysis with low resources and potential security applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of quantum ghost spectroscopy for threat detection in the near infrared, leveraging spectral correlations and nondegenerate photon sources.

Findings

Quantum ghost spectroscopy can detect threats with low resource measurements.

Spectral correlations enable analysis where direct measurement is infeasible.

Near infrared quantum ghost spectroscopy reveals spectral features using visible detectors.

Abstract

Quantum Sensing is a rapidly growing branch of research within the area of quantum science and technology offering key resources, beyond classical ones, with potential for commercialisation of novel (quantum) sensors. The exploitation of quantum resources offered by photons can boost the performance of quantum sensors for innovative and challenging applications. In this paper we build on the idea of the Quantum Ghost Spectroscopy (QGS), i.e. the counterpart in the frequency domain of Quantum Ghost Imaging (QGI), targeting specific applications in the detection of possible threats. This is implemented by exploiting the opportunities offered by Quantum Optics, i.e. the generation of photon pairs characterized by spectral correlations. We will discuss our main results obtained with pure QGS experiments showing that it is possible to assess the presence of a target dealing with a low resources measurement. The time-frequency domain reveals a huge potential for several applications and frequency correlations represent a versatile tool that can be exploited to enable the spectral analysis of objects where a direct measurement would not be feasible (e.g. security). The use of nondegenerate sources of correlated photons allowed to reveal spectral features in the near infrared wavelengths employing the usual detectors for the visible region.