Nonlocal subpicosecond delay metrology using spectral quantum interference

Abstract: Timing and positioning measurements are key requisites for essential quantum network operations such as Bell state measurement. Conventional time-of-flight measurements using single-photon detectors are often limited by detection timing jitter. In this work, we demonstrate a nonlocal scheme to measure changes in relative link latencies with subpicosecond resolution by using tight timing correlation of broadband time-energy entangled photons. Our sensing scheme relies on spectral interference achieved via phase modulation, followed by filtering and biphoton coincidence measurements, and is resilient to microsecond-scale mismatch between the optical link traversed by the biphotons. Our experiments demonstrate a precision of +/-0.04 ps in measurements of nonlocal delay changes and +/-0.7{\deg} in measurements of radio-frequency phase changes. Furthermore, we complement our technique with time-tag information from single-photon detectors in the same setup to present unambiguous sensing of delay changes. The proposed technique can be implemented using off-the-shelf telecom equipment thus rendering it adaptable to practical quantum network infrastructure.