Thermal imaging, microscopy and ultra-trace sensing could take a quantum leap with a technique developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “By pushing the noise limit lower than ever before, we enable these sensors to see things they couldn’t see,” Pooser said. “Imagine an image taken with so low contrast that all you see is a big gray square. Now imagine a technique that enhances the contrast to allow discernible features to emerge from that background.” Their work overcomes fundamental limitations of detection derived from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that the position and momentum of a particle cannot be measured with absolute precision. The more accurately one of the values is known, the less accurately the other value can be known. Ultimately, the new technique, which uses two beams of light to cancel noise, results in a 60 percent error reduction. The result enables higher contrast imaging and detection of lower concentrations of particles than are possible with conventional sensors. To read more, please visit http://www.ornl.gov/ornl/news/news-releases/2015/ornl-reports-method-that-takes-quantum-sensing-to-new-level.