Semiclassical Theory of Superresolution for Two Incoherent Optical Point Sources

Abstract

Using a semiclassical model of photodetection with Poissonian noise and insights from quantum metrology, we prove that linear optics and photon counting can optimally estimate the separation between two incoherent point sources without regard to Rayleigh's criterion. The model is applicable to weak thermal or fluorescent sources as well as lasers.

v1: 2 pages, submitted to QCMC 2016. v2: An extended version titled "Quantum information for semiclassical optics" has been published in Proc. SPIE but cannot be posted here for copyright reasons. A copy of the published paper can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/mankeitsang/conferences