Progress in quantum telescopes
astro-ph.IM, quant-ph
Submitted: 2026-09-16
Updated: 2026-09-16
Comments: 23 pages, 13 figures, review paper
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Classically, the angular resolution of a telescope is limited by its diffraction limit: the ratio of its observing wavelength to its diameter.
Terminology
Abstract
Classically, the angular resolution of a telescope is limited by its diffraction limit: the ratio of its observing wavelength to its diameter. Developments in quantum information theory over the past decade have uncovered quantum-optimal measurement methods that enable super-resolution imaging beyond the diffraction limit, and many laboratory-scale demonstrations of these methods have been performed over the past decade, culminating in the recent first on-sky demonstration of quantum-enhanced astronomical imaging. In this Review, we detail the current progress and achievements of these theoretical and experimental results, discuss the astronomical science cases motivating the development of higher resolution telescopes, summarise the technological challenges facing the practical application of quantum imaging technologies to astronomy, and present a vision for the realization of quantum telescopes with imaging resolutions orders of magnitude better than current observatories.
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