Single-photon imaging over 200 km
Top Cited Papers
- 9 March 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Optica Publishing Group in Optica
- Vol. 8 (3), 344-349
- https://doi.org/10.1364/optica.408657
Abstract
Long-range active imaging has widespread applications in remote sensing and target recognition. Single-photon light detection and ranging (lidar) has been shown to have high sensitivity and temporal resolution. On the application front, however, the operating range of practical single-photon lidar systems is limited to about tens of kilometers over the Earth's atmosphere, mainly due to the weak echo signal mixed with high background noise. Here, we present a compact coaxial single-photon lidar system capable of realizing 3D imaging at up to 201.5 km. It is achieved by using high-efficiency optical devices for collection and detection, and what we believe is a new noise-suppression technique that is efficient for long-range applications. We show that photon-efficient computational algorithms enable accurate 3D imaging over hundreds of kilometers with as few as 0.44 signal photons per pixel. The results represent a significant step toward practical, low-power lidar over extra-long ranges. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing AgreementKeywords
Funding Information
- National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFB0504300)
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (62031024, 61771443)
- Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (2019SHZDZX01)
- Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (2020B0303020001)
- Anhui Initiative in Quantum Information Technologies
- Shanghai Science and Technology Development Foundation (18JC1414700)
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