Sagnac interferometer-based noise-free superresolution using phase-controlled quantum erasers

Abstract: Interferometer-based precision measurements have been intensively studied for sensing and metrology over the past half century. In classical optics, the resolution and phase sensitivity of an optical signal are confined by diffraction limit and shot-noise limit (SNL), respectively. Highly entangled photon pairs, i.e., N00N states have been adapted to overcome SNL in quantum sensing over the last two decades. Recently, coherent light-excited quantum sensing has also been proposed and demonstrated for macroscopic quantum sensing to overcome the limited N scalability in N00N-based quantum sensing. Here, a Sagnac interferometer-based superresolution is proposed to solve environmental noises inevitable in an interferometer. Furthermore, a spatial light modulator takes over the role of phase-controlled quantum erasers to solve the linear optics-based complexity issue in the coherently-excited superresolution. Thus, the proposed Sagnac superresolution can beat the state-of-the-art ring laser gyroscope applied for inertial navigation and geodesy.