Imaging breakthrough for quantum microscopes

A team of physicists from the University of Glasgow and Heriot-Watt University have found a new way to create detailed microscopic images using quantum technology.

The technique uses a quantum phenomenon known as Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference. This occurs when quantum-entangled photons are passed through a beam splitter.

When the photons are identical, they will always exit the splitter in the same direction, a process known as ‘bunching’. When the entangled photons are measured using photodetectors at the end of the path of the split beam of light, a characteristic ‘dip’ in the output probability graph of the light shows that the bunched photons are reaching only one detector and not the other.

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That dip is the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect, which demonstrates the perfect entanglement of two photons, and has been used in logic gates for quantum computers. It has also been used in quantum sensing by putting a transparent surface between one output of the beam splitter and the photodetector, introducing a very slight delay into the time it takes for photons to be detected. Sophisticated analysis of the delay can help reconstruct details such as the thickness of surfaces.

The research is published in the Nature Photonics uses HOM interference to improve the resolution of a microscope. The team used single-photon sensitive cameras to measure the bunched and anti-bunched photons and resolve microscopic images of transparent surfaces with an average depth of 13 microns and a set of letters spelling ‘UofG’ etched onto a piece of glass at around 8 microns deep.

The results demonstrate that it is possible to create detailed, low-noise images of surfaces with a resolution of between one and 10 microns, producing results close to that of a conventional microscope.