Ideas and Limitations for Improving Imaging Resolution via Quantum-Inspired Superresolution

The fundamental task of imaging is to improve one’s ability to discern the details in a given object scene. This could range from tasks as simple as measuring the distance between two known point-like sources, or determining the full intensity profile of a complicated, continuous object distribution. Traditional wisdom in the field dictates that the transverse resolution of a linear optical imaging system is limited by the width of the system’s diffraction-limited point spread function; a limitation known as Rayleigh’s Criterion. Over the past decade, new quantum-inspired superresolution techniques, whose improvement can be measured via well-known statistical metrics such as the Fisher Information, have been shown to possibly circumvent Rayleigh’s Criterion. The details of these techniques, and their limitations, are discussed in this talk.