A research team at INRS develops a simple, energy\u2011efficient method to isolate the right photons\u2014along with their quantum properties.<\/p>\n
In quantum technologies, everything depends on the ability to detect the properties carried by a single photon. But in the real world, that photon of interest is often buried in a sea of unwanted light \u2014 a true “needle in a haystack” challenge that currently limits the deployment of many applications, including secure quantum communication, quantum sensors used in telescope networks, as well as the interconnection of quantum computers to accelerate the development of new drugs and materials.<\/p>\n
At the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), the team of Professor Jos\u00e9 Aza\u00f1a<\/a> , in collaboration with Professor Roberto Morandotti<\/a> ‘s group, has developed a surprisingly simple and energy\u2011efficient way to overcome this obstacle. The work was carried out by Benjamin Crockett during his PhD at the INRS \u00c9nergie Mat\u00e9riaux T\u00e9l\u00e9communications Research Centre<\/a> . He recently completed his degree and is now a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC).<\/p>\n Their method not only reduces noise but, more importantly, recovers essential quantum properties that would otherwise be lost in bright environments where current technologies fail.<\/p>\n “With this new methodology, we were able to recover quantum states corrupted by large amounts of noise\u2014states that would otherwise have been lost. This could allow quantum systems to operate under real\u2011world noise conditions, helping overcome one of the major barriers to the practical deployment of quantum technologies.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Benjamin Crockett, lead author of the study and INRS graduate<\/p>\n The team’s findings were published in Science Advances<\/a> .<\/p>\n Recovering Hidden Quantum Information<\/p>\n By repurposing a classical optical device \u2014 the Talbot Array Illuminator (TAI) \u2014 the researchers succeeded in reorganizing light in time to highlight the useful photons without destructive amplification. The method works for individual photons as well as for time\u2011entangled photon pairs, a key resource for quantum communication. It can even reveal non\u2011classical quantum signatures that normally remain invisible in bright environments.<\/p>\n One of the study’s key insights, explains Benjamin Crockett, is that we can manipulate quantum correlations between photons in much the same way we process images.<\/p>\n Imagine you have an image corrupted by noise (as shown in A of the figure). To make it readable, you can pass it through a series of lenses. These lenses redistribute the image: instead of a blurry, noisy picture, it becomes a set of bright, well\u2011defined points. This transformation makes it easier to ignore the noise and extract the meaningful information.<\/p>\n This principle can be applied in time as well.<\/p>\n Just as we process a spatial image with optical elements, we can use a temporal equivalent of this imaging system to reorganize photon correlations over time. The correlations are redistributed into a series of distinct temporal points, making them much easier to analyze despite noise.<\/p>\n “Seeing quantum properties emerge in a bright environment, without complex processing steps, was one of the most striking results.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Aza\u00f1a, Professor at INRS who specializes in ultrafast photonics<\/p>\n Next Steps<\/p>\n The next phase for the team at INRS is to integrate this method directly onto a chip, to test it in optical fibers and free\u2011space channels, and to combine it with other techniques to improve the range and reliability of future quantum links.<\/p>\n This work was made possible thanks to funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Fonds de recherche du Qu\u00e9bec \u2013 Nature et technologies (FRQNT).<\/p>\n Benjamin Crockett distinguished himself at INRS with several major international honors. He became the first scientist from a Canadian university to win the Tingye Li Innovation Award at the OFC conference, a key milestone in optics and communications. He also received SPIE’s top distinction, the D.J. Lovell Scholarship, along with additional recognition from Optica and the IEEE Photonics Society, underscoring the impact of his work in quantum technologies.<\/p>\n \/Public Release. This material from the originating organization\/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A research team at INRS develops a simple, energy\u2011efficient method to isolate the right photons\u2014along with their quantum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-574469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}