Compact all-fiber quantum-inspired LiDAR with over 100 dB noise rejection and single photon sensitivity.

Entanglement and correlation of quantum light can enhance LiDAR sensitivity in the presence of strong background noise. However, the power of such quantum sources is fundamentally limited to a stream of single photons and cannot compete with the detection range of high-power classical LiDAR transmitters. To circumvent this, we develop and demonstrate a quantum-inspired LiDAR prototype based on coherent measurement of classical time-frequency correlation. This system uses a high-power classical source and maintains the high noise rejection advantage of quantum LiDARs. In particular, we show that it can achieve over 100dB rejection (with 100ms integration time) of indistinguishable (with statistically identical properties in every degree of freedom) in-band noise while still being sensitive to single photon signals. In addition to the LiDAR demonstration, we also discuss the potential of the proposed LiDAR receiver for quantum information applications. In particular, we propose the chaotic quantum frequency conversion technique for coherent manipulation of high dimensional quantum states of light. It is shown that this technique can provide improved performance in terms of selectivity and efficiency as compared to pulse-based quantum frequency conversion.

Quantum and non-local effects offer over 40 dB noise resilience advantage towards quantum lidar.

Non-local effects have the potential to radically move forward quantum enhanced imaging to provide an advantage over classical imaging not only in laboratory environments but practical implementation. In this work, we demonstrate a 43dB higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using a quantum enhanced LiDAR based on time-frequency entanglement compared with a classical phase-insensitive quantum imaging system. Our system can tolerate more than 3 orders of magnitude higher noise than classical single-photon counting quantum imaging systems before detector saturation with a detector dead time of 25ns. 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.