Covert sensing using floodlight illumination

Abstract

We propose a scheme for covert active sensing using floodlight illumination from a THz-bandwidth amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source and heterodyne detection. We evaluate the quantum-estimation-theoretic performance limit of covert sensing, wherein a transmitter's attempt to sense a target phase is kept undetectable to a quantum-equipped passive adversary, by hiding the signal photons under the thermal noise floor. Despite the quantum state of each mode of the ASE source being mixed (thermal), and hence inferior compared to the pure coherent state of a laser mode, the thousand-times higher optical bandwidth of the ASE source results in achieving a substantially superior performance compared to a narrowband laser source by allowing the probe light to be spread over many more orthogonal temporal modes within a given integration time. Even though our analysis is restricted to single-mode phase sensing, this system could be applicable extendible for various practical optical sensing applications.

We present new results and discuss some results found in arXiv:1701.06206. Comments are welcome

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• Entanglement-Assisted Communication Surpassing the Ultimate Classical Capacity
• Demonstration of Entanglement-Enhanced Covert Sensing
• Quantum-Enhanced Transmittance Sensing
• Quantum cryptography beyond key distribution: theory and experiment
• Quantum limits of covert target detection
• Chernoff Information Bottleneck for Covert Quantum Target Sensing