Light detection and ranging with entangled photons

Single-photon light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is a key technology for depth imaging through complex environments. Despite recent advances, an open challenge is the ability to isolate the LiDAR signal from other spurious sources including background light and jamming signals. Here we show that a time-resolved coincidence scheme can address these challenges by exploiting spatio-temporal correlations between entangled photon pairs. We demonstrate that a photon-pair-based LiDAR can distill desired depth information in the presence of both synchronous and asynchronous spurious signals without prior knowledge of the scene and the target object. This result enables the development of robust and secure quantum LiDAR systems and paves the way to time-resolved quantum imaging applications. Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates a time-resolved coincidence scheme to address the isolation challenge of LiDAR signals from other spurious sources. By exploiting spatio-temporal correlations between entangled photon pairs, the scheme is able to distill depth information without prior knowledge.