Recent developments in quantum imaging have shown that resolution limits, previously thought to be fundamental to the specific optical system considered, are largely due to the suboptimal measurement scheme used. Moreover, surface roughness is a critical parameter in many disciplines, particularly in engineering fields, and its accurate estimation is of extreme importance. In this work, we develop a theoretical framework for describing rough surfaces and calculate bounds on the amount of information that can be gathered about the surface roughness using two different measurement schemes: Direct imaging, whereby the intensity of the field propagating from the surface is measured at the image plane; and Spatial mode demultiplexing, where the optical state is first decomposed into a spatial basis and the individual modes are then measured individually. We demonstrate in particular the superiority of mode sorting over direct imaging to extract information about relevant surface parameters in the regime of small roughness. This paves the way towards more accurate quantum-inspired optical techniques for quality inspection of manufactured surfaces in the sub-micrometre regime.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.