The difficulty in observing random, non-repetitive weak signals that are hidden in noise has caused detection challenges in astronomy, spectroscopy, biology and remote sensing. Now, a team from the University of California at San Diego, USA show that a fast, randomly occurring event can be successfully detected and extracted from a noisy background. Their approach uses instantaneous spectral cloning and a single-step, coherent field processor. More specifically, an 80-ps-long pulse was spectrally cloned and processed to increase the received signal-to-noise ratio by 14.1 dB. To separate signal from noise, the number of spectral copies was varied from 6 to 36, proving that background rejection can be progressively increased even when the random event is immersed in a high level of background noise. The team shows that an isolated 80-ps pulse buried in noise could be detected with a confidence level exceeding 99%. The team says that spectral cloning can be used for more complex analyses of random events, in both the microwave and optical domains.
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Won, R. Random success. Nature Photon 10, 73 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.6