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  • Open Access

Enhancing Optical Imaging via Quantum Computation

Aleksandr Mokeev1, Babak Saif2, Mikhail D. Lukin3, and Johannes Borregaard3,*

  • *Contact author: borregaard@fas.harvard.edu
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PRX Quantum 7, 010318 – Published 27 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/s94k-929p

Abstract

Extracting information from weak optical signals is a critical challenge across a broad range of technologies. Conventional imaging techniques, constrained to integrating over detected signals and classical postprocessing, are limited in signal-to-noise ratio from shot noise accumulation in the postprocessing algorithms. We show that these limitations can be circumvented by coherently encoding photonic amplitude information into qubit registers and applying quantum algorithms to process the stored information from asynchronously arriving optical signals. As a specific example, we develop a quantum algorithm for imaging unresolved point sources and apply it to exoplanet detection. We demonstrate that orders-of-magnitude improvements in performance can be achieved under realistic imaging conditions using relatively small-scale quantum processors.

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Popular Summary

High-resolution optical imaging is central to observing distant planets, monitoring objects in orbit, and detecting faint signals in biology. When the light source is very weak and embedded in a noisy background, classical methods must often resort to reconstructing the background noise in order to isolate the signal and obtain a clean image. This demands long integration times and extremely stable instruments.

This work introduces a different strategy based on quantum processing of the light before it becomes classical data. The wavefront information from arriving photons is recorded in a collection of qubits. Once the optical field is stored in this form, quantum algorithms can be used to separate a faint signal from a much brighter background without having to estimate the structure of the background.

We analyze the performance of this approach for the specific case of exoplanet detection and find that the required number of detected photons can be reduced by several orders of magnitude under realistic observing conditions. The circuits use only tens of qubits and hundreds of gates, which is within reach of near-term devices. This provides a route toward practical quantum advantage in weak-field optical imaging.

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PRX Quantum 7, 010318– Published 27 January, 2026
  • Received 17 September 2025
  • Accepted 12 December 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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