Masayuki Okano, Kyoto University
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been a key technology in medicine and biology [1]; however, the axial resolution has been limited to the order of 10 μm due to the dispersion. As an alternative technique, quantum optical coherence tomography (QOCT) has been demonstrated in 19-μm resolution and shows dispersion-tolerance by virtue of the quantum correlation of entangled photon pairs [2].
In this talk, I present our recent progresses on the QOCT. First, I show the perfect dispersion-tolerance in 3 μm-resolution QOCT for a 25-mm water (a diameter of a human eye) and discuss the resolution-enhancement in comparison with the OCT [3]. Second, I report the sub-micron (0.54 μm) resolution QOCT using ultra-broadband entangled photon pairs (163-THz bandwidth), which has been generated from chirped quasi-phase matching devices [4], and demonstrate the dispersion-tolerance for a water [5]. This world-highest resolution QOCT with the dispersion-tolerance can be the powerful tomographic imaging technique in quantum metrology and extend the possibility of the OCT.
[1] M. E. Brezinski, Optical Coherence Tomography (Academic, USA 2006).
[2] M. B. Nasr, B.E.A. Saleh, A.V. Sergienko, and M.C. Teich, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 083601 (2003).
[3] M. Okano, R. Okamoto, A. Tanaka, S. Subashchandran, and S. Takeuchi, Phys. Rev. A 88, 043845 (2013).
[4] S. E. Harris, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 063602 (2007).
[5] M. Okano et. al., manuscript in preparation.