Inherently unpredictable beam steering for quantum LiDAR

Quantum Physics arXiv:2511.09089 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 12 Nov 2025] Title:Inherently unpredictable beam steering for quantum LiDAR Authors:Junyeop Kim, Dongjin Lee, Woncheol Shin, Yeoulheon Seong, Heedeuk Shin View a PDF of the paper titled Inherently unpredictable beam steering for quantum LiDAR, by Junyeop Kim and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Quantum LiDAR offers noise resilience and stealth observation capabilities in low-light conditions. In prior demonstrations, the telescope pointing was raster-scanned, making the observation direction predictable from the pointing direction. However, while Quantum LiDAR can enable stealth observation, operational stealth is enhanced by inherently unpredictable beam steering. Here, we introduce a novel stealth beam steering method that is fundamentally immune to prediction. In a photon pair, the probe photon undergoes diffraction in an unpredictable direction at a grating due to wavelength randomness. The arrival time of the heralding photon, delayed by propagation through a dispersive medium, enables the determination of the probe photon's diffraction direction. Our method successfully detects multiple targets in parallel, demonstrating up to a 1000-fold enhancement in signal-to-noise ratio compared to classical LiDAR. This breakthrough establishes a new paradigm for quantum-enhanced sensing, with far-reaching implications for quantum metrology, secure communications, and beyond. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2511.09089 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2511.09089v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.09089 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Junyeop Kim [view email] [v1] Wed, 12 Nov 2025 08:01:56 UTC (20,852 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Inherently unpredictable beam steering for quantum LiDAR, by Junyeop Kim and 3 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-11 Change to browse by: physics physics.optics References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)