Towards an Experimental Demonstration of Quantum Advantage With Microwave Quantum Illumination

The concept of quantum illumination was introduced by Lloyd more than a decade ago. It consists in using a pair of entangled photons to probe a target located in a very noisy environment which can yield up to 4x signal to noise ratio (SNR) over the best classical setup possible despite the fact that the large amount of noise render the entanglement unobservable. In this talk, we present progress toward an experimental demonstration of this quantum advantage at microwave frequencies using a superconducting platform. The design implements the best possible classical radar as well as a quantum radar that can show up to 2x SNR improvement[1]. We use a Josepshon Parametric Converter (JPC) to generate a two-mode squeezed vacuum state. Part of this mode (the idler) is stored inside the JPC idler mode while the other (the signal) travels to and back from the target. The same JPC is used to perform a joint measurement of signal and idler. This joint measurement of idler and signal is required to see a quantum advantage and is missing in all previous attempts to demonstrate microwave quantum illumination.

[1] Guha, Erkmen, PRA (2009)