Interaction-free interferometry carries half the Fisher information of direct probing for transmissivity, equal information per absorbed photon, and only beats direct schemes when distinguishing an object from empty space, at a rate growing like the number of Zeno cycles.
An Invisible Quantum Tripwire
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abstract
We present here a quantum tripwire, which is a quantum optical interrogation technique capable of detecting an intrusion with very low probability of the tripwire being revealed to the intruder. Our scheme combines interaction-free measurement with the quantum Zeno effect in order to interrogate the presence of the intruder without interaction. The tripwire exploits a curious nonlinear behaviour of the quantum Zeno effect we discovered, which occurs in a lossy system. We also employ a statistical hypothesis testing protocol, allowing us to calculate a confidence level of interaction-free measurement after a given number of trials. As a result, our quantum intruder alert system is robust against photon loss and dephasing under realistic atmospheric conditions and its design minimizes the probabilities of false positives and false negatives as well as the probability of becoming visible to the intruder.
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Counterfactual Quantum Sensing: What Interaction-Free Measurement Can and Cannot Buy
Interaction-free interferometry carries half the Fisher information of direct probing for transmissivity, equal information per absorbed photon, and only beats direct schemes when distinguishing an object from empty space, at a rate growing like the number of Zeno cycles.