Entanglement-Assisted Interferometric Telescope Arrays

Synopsis

Telescopes form the bedrock of observational astronomy, providing a way to probe the nature of celestial objects with great detail. Modern techniques use arrays of telescopes together with interferometric techniques to greatly improve the ability to resolve celestial objects. However, such interferometric techniques are subject to systematic errors such as photon loss and phase fluctuations. These error mechanisms reduce the sensitivity and resolving ability of the telescopic array, in addition to limiting the baseline (distance) between telescopes in the array. A longer baseline is desirable as it permits greater angular resolution. One way to achieve a longer baseline is to employ the techniques of quantum information. In particular, a method known as quantum teleportation can be used to transmit photons arriving from the astronomical source to a central interferometer in an indirect and error-free manner, thus eliminating the need to directly transmit the incoming photons to the interferometer. In this talk, I review proposals to use methods in quantum information to avoid the limitations of classical direct-detection interferometers, which would in principle allow for arbitrarily long interferometer baselines.