A quantum spectrometer using a pair of phase-controlled spatial light modulators for superresolution in quantum sensing

Abstract

Superresolution is a unique quantum feature generated by N00N states or phase-controlled coherent photons via projection measurements in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). Superresolution has no direct relation with supersensitivity in quantum sensing and has a potential application for the precision measurement of an unknown signal frequency. Recently, phase-controlled quantum erasers have been demonstrated for superresolution using classical light of a continuous-wave laser to overcome the diffraction limit in classical physics and to solve the limited scalability in N00N state-based quantum sensing. Here, a quantum spectrometer is presented for the macroscopic superresolution using phase-controlled spatial light modulators (SLMs) in MZI. For validity, a general solution of the superresolution is derived from the SLM-based projection measurements and an unprecedented resolution is numerically confirmed for an unknown frequency of light.