Experimental Demonstration of a Quantum-Optimal Coronagraph Using Spatial Mode Sorters

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12776v1
• Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:55:39 GMT
• Title: Experimental Demonstration of a Quantum-Optimal Coronagraph Using Spatial Mode Sorters
• Authors: Nico Deshler, Itay Ozer, Amit Ashok, Saikat Guha,
• Abstract summary: An ideal direct imaging coronagraph has been shown to achieve the quantum information limits for exoplanet detection and localization. We experimentally implement this quantum-optimal coronagraph using spatial mode (de)multiplexing. We successfully localize an artificial exoplanet at sub-diffraction distances $(sigma)$ from its host star under a 1000:1 star-planet contrast ratio.
• Score: 0.9099663022952499
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: An ideal direct imaging coronagraph, which selectively rejects the fundamental mode of a telescope, has been shown to achieve the quantum information limits for exoplanet detection and localization. In this study, we experimentally implement this quantum-optimal coronagraph using spatial mode (de)multiplexing. Our benchtop system includes a forward and inverse pass through a free-space programmable spatial mode sorter, designed to isolate photons in a point spread function (PSF)-adapted basis. During the forward pass, the fundamental mode is rejected, effectively eliminating light from an on-axis point-like star. On the inverse pass, the remaining modes are coherently recombined, enabling direct imaging of a faint companion. We develop a probabilistic measurement model that accounts for combined effects of fundamental shot noise and experimental noise specific to our benchtop setup, such as modal cross-talk, dark noise, and ambient background illumination. We leverage this measurement model to formulate a maximum-likelihood estimator of the exoplanet position given an image captured with the coronagraph. Using this approach, we successfully localize an artificial exoplanet at sub-diffraction distances $(<\sigma)$ from its host star under a 1000:1 star-planet contrast ratio. Our system accurately localizes the exoplanet up to an absolute error $<0.03\sigma$ over the separation range $[0,\,0.6]\sigma$. Finally, we numerically evaluate the precision of our experimental coronagraph against state-of-the-art coronagraphs subject to comparable noise models.

Related papers

• STAR: A Benchmark for Astronomical Star Fields Super-Resolution [51.79340280382437]
  We propose STAR, a large-scale astronomical SR dataset containing 54,738 flux-consistent star field image pairs.<n>We propose a Flux-Invariant Super Resolution (FISR) model that could accurately infer the flux-consistent high-resolution images from input photometry.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-07-22T09:28:28Z)
• A New Statistical Model of Star Speckles for Learning to Detect and Characterize Exoplanets in Direct Imaging Observations [37.845442465099396]
  This paper presents a novel statistical model that captures nuisance fluctuations using a multi-scale approach. It integrates into an interpretable, end-to-end learnable framework for simultaneous exoplanet detection and flux estimation. The proposed approach is computationally efficient, robust to varying data quality, and well suited for large-scale observational surveys.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-03-21T13:07:55Z)
• Exoplanet Detection via Differentiable Rendering [23.64604723151245]
  Direct imaging of exoplanets faces significant challenges due to the high contrast between host stars and their planets. Wavefront aberrations introduce speckles in the telescope science images, which are patterns of diffracted starlight that can mimic the appearance of planets. Traditional post-processing methods, operating primarily in the image intensity domain, do not integrate wavefront sensing data. We present a differentiable rendering approach that leverages these wavefront sensing data to improve exoplanet detection.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-01-03T17:30:44Z)
• Imaging-based Quantum Optomechanics [0.6025438902954768]
  In active imaging protocols, information about a landscape is encoded into the spatial mode of a scattered photon. We show that backaction in this setting arises from spatial photon shot noise, an effect that cannot be observed in single-mode optomechanics. In conjunction with high-$Q$ nanomechanics, our findings point to new opportunities at the interface of quantum imaging and optomechanics.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-07-09T17:31:50Z)
• Achieving Quantum Limits of Exoplanet Detection and Localization [0.24578723416255752]
  We report the quantum information limits of exoplanet detection and localization specified by the Quantum Chernoff Exponent and the Quantum Fisher Information Matrix. We find that systems which exclusively eliminate the fundamental mode of the telescope, without attenuating higher-order modes, are quantum-optimal in the regime of high star-planet contrasts.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-03-25T21:51:05Z)
• Passive superresolution imaging of incoherent objects [63.942632088208505]
  Method consists of measuring the field's spatial mode components in the image plane in the overcomplete basis of Hermite-Gaussian modes and their superpositions. Deep neural network is used to reconstruct the object from these measurements.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-04-19T15:53:09Z)
• Aligning an optical interferometer with beam divergence control and continuous action space [64.71260357476602]
  We implement vision-based alignment of an optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a confocal telescope in one arm. In an experimental evaluation, the agent significantly outperforms an existing solution and a human expert.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-07-09T14:23:01Z)
• Visualizing spinon Fermi surfaces with time-dependent spectroscopy [62.997667081978825]
  We propose applying time-dependent photo-emission spectroscopy, an established tool in solid state systems, in cold atom quantum simulators. We show in exact diagonalization simulations of the one-dimensional $t-J$ model that the spinons start to populate previously unoccupied states in an effective band structure. The dependence of the spectral function on the time after the pump pulse reveals collective interactions among spinons.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-05-27T18:00:02Z)
• Tunable Anderson Localization of Dark States [146.2730735143614]
  We experimentally study Anderson localization in a superconducting waveguide quantum electrodynamics system. We observe an exponential suppression of the transmission coefficient in the vicinity of its subradiant dark modes. The experiment opens the door to the study of various localization phenomena on a new platform.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-05-25T07:52:52Z)
• Full-mode Characterisation of Correlated Photon Pairs Generated in Spontaneous Downconversion [0.0]
  Spontaneous downconversion is the primary source to generate entangled photon pairs in quantum photonics laboratories. We study the full-mode correlation, on a Laguerre-Gauss basis, between photon pairs generated in a type-I crystal. We also explore the effect of a structured pump beam possessing different spatial modes onto bi-photon spatial correlation.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-03-15T20:17:52Z)
• Single-shot Hyperspectral-Depth Imaging with Learned Diffractive Optics [72.9038524082252]
  We propose a compact single-shot monocular hyperspectral-depth (HS-D) imaging method. Our method uses a diffractive optical element (DOE), the point spread function of which changes with respect to both depth and spectrum. To facilitate learning the DOE, we present a first HS-D dataset by building a benchtop HS-D imager.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-09-01T14:19:35Z)
• Collective radiation from distant emitters [63.391402501241195]
  We show that the spectrum of the radiated field exhibits non-Markovian features such as linewidth broadening beyond standard superradiance. We discuss a proof-of-concept implementation of our results in a superconducting circuit platform.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-06-22T19:03:52Z)
• Experimental control of remote spatial indistinguishability of photons to realize entanglement and teleportation [10.36805343572281]
  This experiment realizes a basic nonlocal entangling gate by the inherent nature of identical quantum subsystems. The amount of entanglement uniquely depends on the degree of remote spatial indistinguishability, quantified by an entropic measure $mathcalI$, which enables teleportation with fidelities above the classical threshold.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-03-24T04:55:58Z)
• Hyperspectral and multispectral image fusion under spectrally varying spatial blurs -- Application to high dimensional infrared astronomical imaging [11.243400478302767]
  We propose a data fusion method which combines the benefits of each image to recover a high-spectral resolution data variant. We conduct experiments on a realistic synthetic dataset of simulated observation of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2019-12-26T13:58:40Z)
• Proposal for an optical interferometric measurement of the gravitational red-shift with satellite systems [52.77024349608834]
  Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP) underpins all metric theories of gravity. The iconic gravitational red-shift experiment places two fermionic systems, used as clocks, in different gravitational potentials. A fundamental point in the implementation of a satellite large-distance optical interferometric experiment is the suppression of the first-order Doppler effect. We propose a novel scheme to suppress it, by subtracting the phase-shifts measured in the one-way and in the two-way configuration between a ground station and a satellite.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2018-11-12T16:25:57Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.