以马赫-曾德尔干涉仪作为基本模型对量子干涉雷达的探测原理进行分析,讨论了目标探测过程中光场量子态的具体演化情况,并采用宇称算符作为相位检测算符分析了量子干涉雷达的回波信号,将其与基于振幅检测的经典雷达回波信号进行比较,证明量子干涉雷达具有超越衍射极限的超分辨率特性.此外,针对大气损耗的进一步研究显示:量子干涉雷达分辨率受大气损耗影响较小,且可通过增大脉冲光子数N克服其影响;而量子干涉雷达的灵敏度则受到较大影响,尤其当两路光的损耗情况不同时,灵敏度随N的增加呈现先升高后降低的趋势;当两路光损耗情况相同时,系统灵敏度随N的增加而升高且正比于1/N~(1/2).综上,可根据探测光的大气损耗情况适当调节参考光的衰减来克服大气损耗带来的不良影响.
There has been aroused much interest in quantum metrology such as quantum radar, due to its applications in sub- Raleigh ranging and remote sensing. For quantum radar, the atmospheric absorption and diffraction rapidly degrade any actively transmitted quantum states of light, such as NOON and M&M' states. Thus for the high-loss condition, the optimal strategy is to transmit coherent state of light, which can only provide sensitivity at the shot-noise limit but suffer no worse loss than the linear Beer's law for classical radar attenuation. In this paper, the target detection theory of quantum interferometric radar in the presence of photon loss is thoroughly investigated with the model of Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and the dynamic evolution of the quantum light field in the detecting process is also investigated. We utilize the parity operator to detect the return signal of quantum interferometric radar with coherent-state source. Then we compare the detection result of quantum radar with that of classical radar, which proves that the quantum radar scheme that employs coherent radiation sources and parity operator detection can provide an N-fold super-resolution, which is much below the Rayleigh diffraction limit; besides, the sensitivity of this scheme can also achieve the shot-noise-limit. Also, we analyze the effect of atmospheric attenuation on the performance of quantum radar, and find that the sensitivity is seriously influenced by atmospheric attenuation: only when the reference beam and the detection beam have the same transmissivity, will the sensitivity increase monotonically with increasing the photon number per pulse N, otherwise it first increases and then decreases with increasing N. Further, the sensivity is directly proportional to 1/N for the first case. In conclusion, we investigate the effects of atmospheric absorption on the resolution and sensitivity of quantum radar, and find that one can overcome the harmful effects of atmospheric attenuation by adjusting the transmissivity of