Robust quantum telescope with a greatly extended measurement range: a Chinese remainder theorem-based method

Area of Science:

• Quantum physics
• Quantum metrology
• Optical interferometry

Background:

• Phase estimation is crucial for quantum precision measurement.
• The 2π periodicity of phase readout causes ambiguity, limiting measurement range and creating a precision-range trade-off.
• Existing methods struggle with this inherent limitation in high-sensitivity applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel multi-baseline measurement scheme to resolve phase ambiguity.
• To enhance the unambiguous measurement range and precision in quantum precision measurements.
• To improve the effective field of view in optical-interferometric quantum telescopes.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) with pairwise coprime scale factors.
• Establishing congruence relations among reduced phases to recover the wrap-around number.
• Constructing a quantum telescope array with fractional baselines based on CRT.

Main Results:

• Substantially enlarged unambiguous angular range (effective field of view) for quantum telescopes.
• Achieved an exponential improvement in detection range compared to existing methods under similar constraints.
• Demonstrated a superior range-precision trade-off with reduced probing resources.

Conclusions:

• The proposed CRT-based multi-baseline scheme effectively overcomes phase ambiguity in quantum measurements.
• This framework offers practical advantages for multi-baseline quantum-interferometric observations.
• The method is generalizable to various phase-sensitive quantum precision measurement tasks.