The Quantum Illumination Story

Abstract

Superposition and entanglement, the quintessential characteristics of quantum physics, have been shown to provide communication, computation, and sensing capabilities that go beyond what classical physics will permit. It is natural, therefore, to explore their application to radar, despite the fact that decoherence—caused by the loss and noise encountered in radar sensing—destroys these fragile quantum properties. This article tells the story of “quantum illumination,” an entanglement-based approach to quantum radar, from its inception to its current understanding. Remarkably, despite loss and noise that destroy its initial entanglement, quantum illumination does offer a target-detection performance improvement over a classical radar of the same transmitted energy. A realistic assessment of that improvement's utility, however, shows that its value is severely limited. Nevertheless, the fact that entanglement can be of value on an entanglement-breaking channel—the meta-lesson of the quantum illumination story—should spur continued research on quantum radar.