The Governors of the University of Calgary

Purpose

Optical interferometry is the foundation for applications ranging from imaging and astronomy to structural measurement. Optical interferometry typically involves a coherent light source combined with passive optical elements followed by observing interference through measurement. Without quantum resources, in single parameter detection of a phase ϕ , the imprecision of the inferred phase will scale as , where is the intensity of the source. The team will aim to explore interferometry approaches that are potentially boosted by use of active components to imprecisions . In particular, the researchers will make use of nonlinear optical parametric processes that generate quantum correlations in the probing light. This approach is also known as SU(1,1) interferometry. The project will span fundamental mathematical properties of such systems to realistic considerations such as loss and noise in order to bring these tools closer to practical applications.