New optical trick pulls hidden quantum signals out of background noise

New optical trick pulls hidden quantum signals out of background noise

Bright background light can do more than clutter a quantum experiment. It can wash out the very features that make quantum systems useful in the first place. That is the problem a team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, or INRS, set out to tackle. Working with light particles called photons, the researchers built a way to sift out meaningful quantum signals even when those signals are buried under heavy optical noise. Their r…