Subwavelength quantum imaging with noisy detectors

Abstract

It has been recently shown that an interferometric measurement may allow for sub-wavelength resolution of incoherent light. Whereas this holds for noiseless detectors, one could expect that the resolution is in practice limited by signal-to-noise ratio. Here I present an assessment of the ultimate resolution limits that can be achieved using noisy detectors. My analysis indeed indicates that the signal-to-noise ratio represents a fundamental limit to quantum imaging, and the reduced resolution scales with the square root of the signal-to-noise ratio. For example, a signal-to-ratio of $20 dB$ is needed to resolve one order of magnitude below the Rayleigh limit.