Photonic Quantum-Enhanced Sensors

传感器渗透到我们的社会中，测量支撑着定量行动，标准化的准确测量是所有商业的基础。测量参数和越来越精确地感知现象的能力一直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快速增长的理解极大地扩展了测量和传感的极限，为当前传感技术的根本替代方法开辟了机会。通过本奖学金提出的发展，我的目标是通过利用独特的量子力学现象和原理来增强传感器，这些原理受到量子物理学的启发，为最终用户开发一系列原型。我计划为最先进的技术提供替代方法，以潜在地降低总体成本并显着提高能力，达到精度测量的新极限，并开发这项技术用于商业化。光是一种极好的传感和测量探头。独特的波长依赖的吸收和原子光子的再发射使物质的性质能够被测量和组成成分的识别。干涉仪在纳米尺度上提供超灵敏的光路长度变化测量，转化为距离，材料膨胀或样品密度等物理变化。然而，对于任何典型的光学传感器，量子力学预测了在这种实验中可以抑制多少噪声的基本限制-这就是所谓的射击噪声，并且在使用典型的“干净”辐射源激光时经常被观察到作为噪声底。通过利用光的量子特性，它有可能达到超过射击噪声的精度，从而实现精密传感器的新范例。这种量子增强传感器可以在光学探头中使用更少的光来获得与传统光学传感器相同的精度水平。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；微量气体检测中微弱信号的分辨干涉测量中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限制时，精度增加。量子增强技术正被激光干涉引力波天文台（LIGO）科学合作项目用于在千米尺度的迈克尔逊干涉仪（GEO600）上实现引力波探测的亚粒噪声精密干涉测量。然而，在其他方面，明显缺乏实际设备来证明量子增强传感作为医疗保健、精密制造、国家安全和商业的颠覆性技术的潜力。为了使量子增强传感器变得小型、便携，并因此在专业量子光学实验室之外的应用范围扩大，很明显，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。要求包括鲁棒性、小型化、固有相位稳定性和更高的效率。平版印刷制造的大部分平台提供了可重复和负担得起的制造。我的奖学金提案旨在将革命性的量子增强传感能力和光子芯片规模架构结合起来。这将使超越经典物理极限的能力：吸收光谱，芯片实验室干涉测量和过程断层扫描（用更少的测量和更少的探针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).