Application range of crosstalk-affected spatial demultiplexing for resolving separations between unbalanced sources
Résumé
Superresolution is one of the key issues at the crossroads of contemporary quantum optics and metrology. Recently, it was shown that for an idealized case of two balanced sources, spatial mode demultiplexing (SPADE) achieves resolution better than direct imaging even in the presence of measurement crosstalk [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 100501 (2020)]. In this work, we consider the more general case of unbalanced sources and provide a systematic analysis of the impact of crosstalk on the resolution obtained from SPADE depending on the strength of crosstalk, relative brightness and the separation between the sources. We find that, in contrast to the original findings for perfectly balanced sources, SPADE performs worse than ideal direct imaging in the asymptotic limit of vanishing source separations. Nonetheless, for realistic values of crosstalk strength, SPADE is still the superior method for several orders of magnitude of source separations.