Photonic Quantum-Enhanced Sensors

传感器渗透到我们的社会，测量是定量行为的基础，标准化的准确测量是所有商业的基础。测量参数和感知现象的能力越来越精确，这总是导致科学和技术的巨大进步--例如X射线成像、磁共振成像(MRI)、干涉测量和扫描隧道显微镜。我们对如何设计和控制量子系统的理解迅速增长，极大地扩展了测量和传感的范围，为传感领域的当前技术水平开辟了从根本上替代方法的机会。通过本次联谊会提出的发展建议，我的目标是提供传感器，利用独特的量子力学现象和原理，并受到对量子物理的见解的启发，与最终用户一起开发一系列原型。我计划提供最先进的替代方法，潜在地降低总体成本并显著提高能力，达到精确测量的新极限，并将这项技术开发为商业化。光是传感和测量的优秀探头。独特的波长相关吸收和原子对光子的重新发射使物质的性质得以测量和组成成分的识别。干涉仪提供了纳米级光程长度变化的超灵敏测量，例如，转化为距离、材料膨胀或样品密度的物理变化。然而，对于任何典型的光学传感器，量子力学都预测了在此类实验中可以抑制多少噪声的基本极限--这就是所谓的散粒噪声，在使用激光时，通常被观察到作为噪声底线，激光是典型的“清洁”辐射源。通过利用光的量子特性，有可能达到超越散粒噪声的精确度，使一种新的精密传感器范例得以实现。这种量子增强型传感器可以在光学探头中使用更少的光，以获得与传统光学传感器相同的精度。例如，这可以减少生物样品中可能改变样品性质或损坏样品的有害吸收；痕量气体检测中微弱信号的分辨率；干涉测量中可能改变测量结果的光子压力的降低；当达到光学激光输入的极限时，提高精度。激光干涉仪引力波天文台(LIGO)的科学合作正在使用量子增强技术，以实现千米级迈克尔逊干涉仪(GEO600)引力波探测的亚散斑噪声精密干涉测量。然而，在其他方面，明显缺乏实用设备来证明量子增强传感作为一种颠覆性技术在医疗保健、精密制造、国家安全和商业中的潜力。为了使量子增强传感器变得小规模、便携，从而适用于专业量子光学实验室以外的更广泛的应用，显然迫切需要设计一个集成光学平台，以满足量子增强传感的需求。要求包括稳健性、小型化、固有的相位稳定性和更高的效率。平台的大部分光刻制造提供了可重复和负担得起的制造。我的联谊会计划旨在将革命性的量子增强传感能力和光子芯片规模的架构结合在一起。这将使其能够超越经典物理的限制：吸收光谱、芯片上实验室干涉测量和过程层析成像(用更少的测量和更少的探测光子揭示未知的量子过程)。

Sensors permeate our society, measurement underpins quantitative action and standardized accurate measurements are a foundation of all commerce. The ability to measure parameters and sense phenomena with increasing precision has always led to dramatic advances in science and in technology - for example X-ray imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), interferometry and the scanning-tunneling microscope. Our rapidly growing understanding of how to engineer and control quantum systems vastly expands the limits of measurement and of sensing, opening up opportunities in radically alternative methods to the current state of the art in sensing. Through the developments proposed in this Fellowship, I aim to deliver sensors enhanced by the harnessing of unique quantum mechanical phenomena and principles inspired by insights into quantum physics to develop a series of prototypes with end-users. I plan to provide alternative approaches to the state of the art, to potentially reduce overall cost and dramatically increase capability, to reach new limits of precision measurement and to develop this technology for commercialization.Light is an excellent probe for sensing and measurement. Unique wavelength dependent absorption, and reemission of photons by atoms enable the properties of matter to be measured and the identification of constituent components. Interferometers provide ultra-sensitive measurement of optical path length changes on the nanometer-scale, translating to physical changes in distance, material expansion or sample density for example. However, for any canonical optical sensor, quantum mechanics predicts a fundamental limit of how much noise in such experiment can be suppressed - this is the so-called shot noise and is routinely observed as a noise floor when using a laser, the canonical "clean" source of radiation. By harnessing the quantum properties of light, it is possible reach precision beyond shot noise, enabling a new paradigm of precision sensors to be realized. Such quantum-enhanced sensors can use less light in the optical probe to gain the same level of precision in a conventional optical sensor. This enables, for example: the reduction of detrimental absorption in biological samples that can alter sample properties or damage it; the resolution of weak signals in trace gas detection; reduction of photon pressure in interferometry that can alter the measurement outcome; increase in precision when a limit of optical laser input is reached. Quantum-enhanced techniques are being used by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) scientific collaboration to reach sub-shot noise precision interferometry of gravitational wave detection in kilometer-scale Michelson interferometers (GEO600). However, there is otherwise a distinct lack of practical devices that prove the potential of quantum-enhanced sensing as a disruptive technology for healthcare, precision manufacture, national security and commerce.For quantum-enhanced sensors to become small-scale, portable and therefore practical for an increased range of applications outside of the specialized quantum optics laboratory, it is clear that there is an urgent need to engineer an integrated optics platform, tailored to the needs of quantum-enhanced sensing. Requirements include robustness, miniaturization inherent phase stability and greater efficiency. Lithographic fabrication of much of the platform offers repeatable and affordable manufacture. My Fellowship proposal aims to bring together revolutionary quantum-enhanced sensing capabilities and photonic chip scale architectures. This will enable capabilities beyond the limits of classical physics for: absorbance spectroscopy, lab-on-chip interferometry and process tomography (revealing an unknown quantum process with fewer measurements and fewer probe photons).