We present the first experimental demonstration of quantum-enhanced detection at x-ray wavelengths. We show that x-ray pairs that are generated by spontaneous down-conversion can be used for the generation of heralded x-ray photons and measure directly the sub-Poissonian statistics of the single photons by using photon number resolving detectors. We utilize the properties of the strong time-energy correlations of the down converted photons to demonstrate the ability to improve the visibility and the signal-to-noise ratio of an image with a small number of photons in an environment with a noise level that is higher than the signal by many orders of magnitude. In our work we demonstrate a new protocol for the measurement of quantum effects with x-rays using advantages such as background free measurements that the x-ray regime offers for experiments aiming at testing fundamental concepts in quantum optics.
@article{arxiv.1907.04045,
title = {Quantum enhanced X-ray detection},
author = {S. Sofer and E. Strizhevsky and A. Schori and K. Tamasaku and S. Shwartz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.04045},
year = {2019}
}