Mid-Infrared Quantum Imaging and Spectroscopy

中红外量子成像和光谱学

• 批准号: 314745413
• 负责人: Dr. Sven Ramelow
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Physik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Independent Junior Research Groups
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-31 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/314745413?language=en
• 关键词: Mid; Infrared; Quantum; Imaging; Spectroscopy

The central goal of my research plan is pioneering and establishing mid-infrared quantum spectroscopy and quantum spectral-imaging based on induced quantum coherence. Quantum enhanced sensing is a vividly developing branch of quantum optics that starts touching on practical, real-world applications. First conceived from fundamental insights on the classical limits of sensing and imaging and how to overcome them with quantum states of light it enables for example to bypass Abbes famous optical resolution limit and to reduce fundamental noise from the quantization of light (shot-noise) leveraging quantum resources like entanglement and nonclassical photon statistics. Mid-IR light between wavelengths of 2-20 um has tremendous scientific and technological relevance because it covers the most intense and distinct vibrational molecular absorption bands, e.g. of important gas molecules or stretching modes of specific chemical groups in biological tissues. This makes it excellently suited for molecular spectroscopy and spectral imaging leading to a wide range of uses in chemical or bio-medical research and diagnostics. However, there are severe technological roadblocks for real-world mid-IR applications. The dominant reason is that detectors, cameras and spectrometers for the mid-infrared fundamentally have many orders of magnitude worse performance than their Si-based counterparts in the visible wavelength regime imposing serious limitations on sensitivity, dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio, acquisition time, and temporal and spatial resolution. Moreover, despite promising progress for quantum cascade lasers, mid-IR super-continuum sources, mid-IR frequency combs or mid-IR synchrotron radiation, commercially available and bright sources of mid-infrared light are much more complex, cost-intensive, and less robust then their visible wavelength lasers such as laser diodes. Based on quantum optics, my research plan aims at fully overcoming these limitations, by not requiring any detectors or laser sources in the mid-IR, and using only high performance cameras and detectors sensitive in the visible. This is enabled by a recently introduced quantum optics approach using induced quantum coherence for quantum imaging with undetected photons (Nature 512, 409, 2014). Implementing mid-IR quantum imaging and spectroscopy will not only be fundamentally interesting opening up an entirely new wavelength regime for quantum optics but will be highly relevant for a wide range of applications in chemical sensing, biological analysis or medical diagnostics. A striking example and first target application is label-free, chemically selective mid-IR microscopy of tissues relevant for cancer diagnostics. Moreover, because this approach relies intrinsically on quantum entanglement it naturally opens up avenues for quantum enhanced resolution and sub-shot-noise performance, as well as for ultra-low light level illumination important for studying very sensitive samples.

我的研究计划的中心目标是开创和建立中红外量子光谱和量子光谱成像的基础上诱导量子相干。量子增强传感是量子光学的一个蓬勃发展的分支，开始触及实际的，现实世界的应用。首先从对传感和成像的经典极限以及如何用光的量子态克服它们的基本见解中构思出来，它使例如能够绕过Abbes著名的光学分辨率极限，并利用量子资源（如纠缠和非经典光子统计）减少光量子化的基本噪声（散粒噪声）。波长在2-20 μ m之间的中红外光具有巨大的科学和技术相关性，因为它覆盖了最强烈和最明显的振动分子吸收带，例如重要气体分子或生物组织中特定化学基团的拉伸模式。这使得它非常适合分子光谱和光谱成像，从而在化学或生物医学研究和诊断中得到广泛的应用。然而，现实世界的中红外应用存在严重的技术障碍。主要原因是，中红外的检测器、相机和光谱仪基本上具有比可见波长范围中的基于Si的对应物差许多数量级的性能，这对灵敏度、动态范围、信噪比、采集时间以及时间和空间分辨率造成了严重的限制。此外，尽管量子级联激光器、中红外超连续光源、中红外频率梳或中红外同步辐射有希望取得进展，但中红外光的市售和明亮光源比其可见波长激光器（例如激光二极管）复杂得多、成本密集型得多，并且鲁棒性较差。基于量子光学，我的研究计划旨在完全克服这些限制，不需要任何中红外探测器或激光源，只使用高性能相机和可见光敏感探测器。这是通过最近引入的量子光学方法来实现的，该方法使用诱导量子相干性用于具有未检测到的光子的量子成像（Nature 512，409，2014）。实现中红外量子成像和光谱学不仅从根本上讲是有趣的，为量子光学开辟了一个全新的波长范围，而且与化学传感，生物分析或医学诊断等广泛应用高度相关。一个突出的例子和第一个目标应用是与癌症诊断相关的组织的无标记、化学选择性中红外显微镜。此外，由于这种方法本质上依赖于量子纠缠，因此它自然为量子增强分辨率和子散粒噪声性能以及对研究非常敏感的样品至关重要的超低光级照明开辟了途径。