Sven Ramelow joined the “Sensors with entangled photons in the mid-infrared region” project at Berlin’s Humboldt-Universität, where he already leads the Emmy Noether Nonlinear Quantum Optics junior research group at the Department of Physics. In recent decades, enormous technological progress has been made in approaches to preparing, altering, and measuring the quantum states of light. Phenomena such as quantum entanglement and quantum superposition make completely new types of applications possible, and quantum sensors with quantum light play a particularly crucial role. They are similar to sensors that operate with standard light as used in imaging, microscopy, and spectroscopy, but can build on and expand their sophisticated technology. Ramelow’s approach uses quantum-based measurements with undetected photons, an innovative process where entangled photon pairs are used to collect measurement information in different infrared regions without the need for infrared lasers or detectors. The first industrial applications are already being developed in partnership with Ramelow. Now the project is aiming to further develop basic quantum sensor research and adapt the technology for use in other settings, such as diagnostics imaging in healthcare.
