Quantum Inspired Microwave Phase Super-Resolution at Room Temperature

Abstract

Quantum metrology has been shown to surpass classical limits of correlation, resolution, and sensitivity. It has been introduced to interferometric Radar schemes, with intriguing preliminary results. Even quantum-inspired detection of classical signals may be advantageous in specific use cases. Following ideas demonstrated so far only in the optical domain, where practically no thermal background photons exist, we realize room-temperature microwave frequency super-resolved phase measurements with trillions of photons, while saturating the Cramer-Rao bound of sensitivity. We experimentally estimate the interferometric phase using the expectation value of the Parity operator by two methods. We achieve super-resolution up to 1200 times better than the wavelength with 25ns integration time and 56dB SNR.