Linear optics and photodetection achieve near-optimal unambiguous coherent state discrimination
Abstract
Coherent states of the quantum electromagnetic field, the quantum description of ideal laser light, are prime candidates as information carriers for optical communications. A large body of literature exists on their quantum-limited estimation and discrimination. However, very little is known about the practical realizations of receivers for unambiguous state discrimination (USD) of coherent states. Here we fill this gap and outline a theory of USD with receivers that are allowed to employ: passive multimode linear optics, phase-space displacements, auxiliary vacuum modes, and on-off photon detection. Our results indicate that, in some regimes, these currently-available optical components are typically sufficient to achieve near-optimal unambiguous discrimination of multiple, multimode coherent states.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2109.00008,
title = {Linear optics and photodetection achieve near-optimal unambiguous coherent state discrimination},
author = {Jasminder S. Sidhu and Michael S. Bullock and Saikat Guha and Cosmo Lupo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.00008},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
20 pages, 13 figures, and 2 tables, including appendices. Accepted version with reference styling for Quantum