Quantum Interrogation and the Safer X-ray

Abstract

We investigate quantum interrogation techniques which allow imaging information about semi-transparent objects to be obtained with lower absorption rates than standard classical methods. We show that a gain proportional to log N can be obtained when searching for defects in an array of N pixels, if it is known that at most M of the pixels can have transparencies different from a predetermined theoretical value. A logarithmic gain can also be obtained when searching for infrequently occurring large structures in arrays.