Covert sensing using floodlight illumination

We propose a scheme for covert active sensing using floodlight illumination from a terahertz-bandwidth amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source and heterodyne detection. We evaluate the quantum-estimationtheoretic 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 narrow-band 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 or extendible for various practical optical sensing applications.General Dynamics research and development contract; Office of Naval Research program Communications and Networking with Quantum Operationally-Secure Technology for Maritime Deployment (CONQUEST) under Raytheon BBN Technologies [N00014-16-C-2069]; UK EPSRC [EP/K04057X/2]; UK National Quantum Technologies Programme [EP/M013243/1, EP/M01326X/1]This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu