Breaking the shot noise limit in optical tweezers

What is it about?

Any measurement using light is fundamentally constrained by shot noise, due to the random arrival of photons at the detector. However, the quantum optics community developed technologies to break the shot noise limit over the past three decades, using engineered quantum states of light in which photons arrive in a non-random pattern. We incorporated this quantum technology into optical tweezers, demonstrating particle tracking measurement below the shot noise limit, and using this for a proof-of-principle biological microrheology experiment.

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Why is it important?

This was the first experiment to translate quantum optics methods to break the shot noise limit in either microscopy or biophysics.