The research included in this thesis comes in two main bodies. In the first, the focus is on intensity interferometric schemes, and I attempt to identify the types of correlations dominant in their operation. This starts with the, now rather historical, Hanbury Brown and Twiss setup from the 1950s and progresses to more recent interests such as ghost imaging and a variant of `quantum illumination', which is a quantum-enhanced detection scheme. These schemes are considered in the continuous variable regime, with Gaussian states in particular. Intensity interferometry has been the cause of a number of disputes between quantum opticians over the past 60 years and I weigh in on the arguments using relatively recent techniques from quantum information theory. In the second half, the focus turns away from the optical imaging and detection schemes, and onto quantum estimation -- multiparameter quantum estimation to be precise. This is an intriguing area of study where one has to carefully juggle tradeoffs in choosing both the optimal measurement and optimal state for performing an estimation in two or more parameters. I lay out a framework for circumventing some of the difficulties involved in this and apply it to several physical examples, revealing some interesting and at times counterintuitive features of multiparameter estimation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:674836 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Ragy, Sammy |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29097/ |
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