Metasurface enabled quantum edge detection.

Junxiao Zhou,Haoliang Qian,Shuangchun Wen,Zhaowei Liu,Yinhai Li,Hailu Luo,Zhiyuan Zhou,Shikai Liu,Baosen Shi,Guangcan Guo

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc4385

Abstract

Metasurfaces consisting of engineered dielectric or metallic structures provide unique solutions to realize exotic phenomena including negative refraction, achromatic focusing, electromagnetic cloaking, and so on. The intersection of metasurface and quantum optics may lead to new opportunities but is much less explored. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate that a polarization-entangled photon source can be used to switch ON or OFF the optical edge detection mode in an imaging system based on a high-efficiency dielectric metasurface. This experiment enriches both fields of metasurface and quantum optics, representing a promising direction toward quantum edge detection and image processing with remarkable signal-to-noise ratio.

Highlights

Photonic metasurfaces, two-dimensional ultrathin arrays of engineered metallic or dielectric structures, are versatile optical components enabling electromagnetic field manipulation of the local phase, amplitude, and polarization [1,2,3,4]
Polarization-entangled photons are generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion process in a 20-mm-long type II phase-matched periodically poled KTiOPO4 (PPKTP) crystal embedded in a Sagnac interferometer
It is known that one can achieve edge detection by using a traditional amplitude filter placed in the Fourier plane of a 4f system

Summary

Introduction

Two-dimensional ultrathin arrays of engineered metallic or dielectric structures, are versatile optical components enabling electromagnetic field manipulation of the local phase, amplitude, and polarization [1,2,3,4]. These capabilities are typically developed for various applications in the regime of classical optics. In the field of quantum imaging, spatial intensity correlations between photon pairs can be exploited to surpass the classical limits of imaging [12,13,14]. Recent efforts indicate a trend to combine the metasurface with entangled photons for various potential applications in quantum optics [16,17,18,19,20]

Methods

Results

Conclusion