Metrology explores the most efficient and precise way to perform measurements. This established area of study has considerable impact on our everyday lives. A GPS would not work without the capability to measure distances precisely, and spectral fingerprinting is an established technique to identify, e.g. drugs and hazardous materials. In recent years, researchers have begun to study metrology in the counterintuitive realm of quantum mechanics, so called quantum metrology. Surprisingly – or maybe not so, depending on whom you ask – it turns out that quantum properties such as entanglement can be highly beneficial for metrological tasks. Experiments have yielded measurement precision that goes beyond that of any classical measurement and to date, ever more demonstrations are reaching the ultimate precision limits set by quantum mechanics. These findings have two potential impacts: on the one hand, we can imagine measurements that simply cannot be implemented with classical means and that consequently enable hitherto unknown applications; on the other hand, we find that a better measurement can reach the same precision as a worse measurement in less time, leading to faster data acquisition. Interestingly, quantum metrology mainly focusses on measuring phases, with only few works considering spatial imaging. There is no comprehensive approach to measuring time or frequency using quantum mechanical methods, although many applications could benefit from such techniques.
This is where the work of STORMYTUNE comes in. We will develop a theoretical and experimental toolbox for time-frequency quantum metrology and explore possible avenues for improving applications using our methods. In contrast to other approaches to quantum metrology that mainly focus on using fragile probe states, we will investigate the achievable benefits when using quantum measurements and simple, robust probe states. Further, we aim to improve the performance of our techniques by adding the ideas of superresolution measurements and compressed sensing to time-frequency quantum metrology, thus reducing measurement times even further.
The STORMYTUNE consortium comprises world-leading scientists and industry partners, who are ideally positioned to achieve the project goals. For this research, we have identified three strategic objectives that will guide our efforts.
- Objective 1: Develop a time-frequency quantum metrology toolbox that comprises of the tools and methods for investigating the limits of temporal and spectral measurements using quantum mechanics.
- Objective 2: Investigate the limits of time-frequency quantum metrology with regards to the ultimate measurement precision, the resource consumption, and the ease of implementation.
- Objective 3: Implement proof-of-concept demonstrations that show a clear benefit of quantum metrology when compared to standard measurements and that exploit techniques from superresolution measurements and compressed sensing.
