Entanglement-assisted detection of fading targets via correlation-to-displacement conversion

Abstract

Quantum illumination utilizes an entanglement-enhanced sensing system to outperform classical illumination in detecting a suspected target, despite the entanglement-breaking loss and noise. However, practical and optimal receiver design to fulfill the quantum advantage has been a long open problem. Recently, Shi et al. [arXiv:2207.06609 (2022)] proposed the correlation-to-displacement ('C - D') conversion module to enable an optimal receiver design that greatly reduces the complexity of the previous known optimal receiver [Q. Zhuang, Z. Zhang, and J. H. Shapiro, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 040801 (2017)10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.040801]. There, the analyses of the conversion module assume an ideal target with a known reflectivity and a fixed return phase. In practical applications, however, targets often induce a random return phase; moreover, their reflectivities can have fluctuations obeying a Rayleigh distribution. In this paper, we extend the analyses of the C - D module to realistic targets and show that the entanglement advantage is maintained albeit reduced. In particular, the conversion module allows exact and efficient performance evaluation despite the non-Gaussian nature of the quantum channel involved. © 2023 American Physical Society.