Experimental realization of quantum illumination
E. D. Lopaeva, I. Ruo Berchera, I. P. Degiovanni, S. Olivares, G. Brida, and M. Genovese
Accepted
We present the first experimental realisation of the quantum illumination protocol proposed in Ref.s [S. Lloyd, Science 321, 1463 (2008); S. Tan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 253601 (2008)], achieved in a simple feasible experimental scheme based on photon-number correlations. A main achievement of our result is the demonstration of a strong robustness of the quantum protocol to noise and losses, that challenges some widespread wisdom about quantum technologies.