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# Integrable systems associated with the Bruhat Poisson structures.

## 1 Introduction.

00footnotetext: Research is partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0072520.

Let $`K`$ be a compact real form of a complex semi-simple Lie group $`G`$ and let $`HK`$ be a subgroup of $`K`$ defined by $`H=KP`$, where $`P`$ is a parabolic subgroup of $`G`$ containing a Borel subgroup $`BG`$. The Bruhat Poisson structure $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ on $`X=K/H`$, first introduced by Soibelman  and Lu-Weinstein , has the property that its symplectic leaves are precisely the Bruhat cells in $`X`$. If $`T=KB`$ is a maximal torus of $`K`$, then $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ is $`T`$-invariant. Let $`\omega _s`$ (respectively, $`\pi _s`$) stand for a $`K`$-invariant symplectic form (respectively, dual bi-vector field) on $`X`$, which we assume now to be a compact hermitian symmetric space. It was shown by Khoroshkin-Radul-Rubtsov in  that the two Poisson structures, $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`\pi _s`$ are compatible, meaning that the Schouten bracket of $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`\pi _s`$ vanishes, $`[\pi _{\mathrm{}},\pi _s]=0`$. In particular, any bi-vector field of the form $`\alpha \pi _{\mathrm{}}+\beta \pi _s`$, $`(\alpha ,\beta )R^2`$, is Poisson. In this situation, one can introduce the following family $`\{f_k\}`$ of functions:

$$f_k:=(\pi _{\mathrm{}}^{}{}_{}{}^{k},\omega _s^k),$$

obtained by the duality pairing of exterior powers of $`\omega `$ and $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$. If the (real) dimension of $`X`$ is equal to $`2n`$, then we have $`n`$ functions, $`f_1`$, …, $`f_n`$ which may carry some useful information about $`X`$. These functions are in involution with respect to either of the two Poisson structures. We make explicit computations for $`CP^n`$, since this is the only case, where we can present an explicit coordinate approach. We show how the function that we have obtained are related to the Gelfand-Tsetlin integrable systems studied by Guillemin and Sternberg . Analogous statements for other hermitian symmetric spaces will appear elsewhere . In the last part of the paper we make explicit computations using the Lenard scheme .

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank Lu Jiang-Hua and Sam Evens for answering many questions regarding Bruhat-Poisson structures. Lu Jiang-Hua also provided simple proofs of Propositions 2.1 and 2.2. I thank Hermann Flaschka for conversations about integrable systems. I thank Yan Soibelman for historical remarks, and Ping Xu for discussions about Poisson-Nijenhuis manifolds.

## 2 Families of functions in involution.

Multi-hamiltonian structures are very important in the theory of integrable systems. Starting with the fundamental works of Magri , bi- and multi-Hamiltonian structures found many interesting and fundamental applications, as in , ,  and references therein.

Let $`M`$ be a manifold and let $`\pi _b`$ and $`\pi _s`$ be two Poisson structures on $`M`$ such that

1. The Poisson structure $`\pi _s`$ is non-degenerate (so the subscript $`s`$ stands for symplectic).

2. The Poisson structures $`\pi _s`$ and $`\pi _b`$ are compatible, meaning that the Schouten bracket $`[\pi _s,\pi _b]`$ vanishes. Or, equivalently, for any two real numbers $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, the bi-vector field $`\alpha \pi _s+\beta \pi _b`$ defines a Poisson structure on $`M`$.

If $`\mathrm{dim}(M)=2n`$, then we can define $`n`$ functions $`f_1`$, …, $`f_n`$ as follows:

$$f_j=\frac{\pi _b^j\pi _s^{nj}}{\pi _s^n}.$$

The operation of division by the top degree bi-vector field makes perfect sense, since $`\pi _s`$ is non-degenerate, and thus in any local coordinate system $`(x_1,`$$`x_{2n})`$ the $`2n`$-vector field $`\pi _s^n`$ looks like

$$\pi _s^n=h(x_1,\mathrm{},x_{2n})_{x_1}\mathrm{}_{x_{2n}},$$

for a non-vanishing function $`h(x_1`$, …, $`x_{2n})`$. Equivalently, if $`\omega _s`$ is the symplectic form dual to $`\pi _s`$, then one can define

$$f_k:=(\pi _{\mathrm{}}^{}{}_{}{}^{k},\omega _s^k),$$

where we use the duality pairing

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(M,^{2k}TM)\mathrm{\Gamma }(M,^{2k}T^{}M)C^{\mathrm{}}(M).$$

It turns out that this family of functions has the following property.

###### PROPOSITION 2.1

The family of functions $`f_i`$ defined above are in involution with respect to either Poisson structure, $`\pi _b`$ or $`\pi _s`$.

Proof. (J.-H. Lu) Let $`X_i=i_{df_i}\pi _b`$ and let $`Y_j=i_{df_j}\pi _s`$. Consider the equality $`f_k\pi _s^n=\pi _b^k\pi _s^{nk}`$ and compute $`L_{X_l}`$ of both sides to arrive to the following identity:

$$\frac{nk}{k+1}\{f_{k+1},f_l\}_s=\{f_k,f_l\}_b+nf_k\{f_1,f_l\}_s,$$

where the subscripts $`s`$ or $`b`$ indicate with respect to which Poisson structure the Poisson bracket is taken. Finally, use the induction on $`l`$. $``$

Remark. The approach that we have followed here is intimately related to the Poisson-Nijenhuis structures, that were studied by Magri and Morosi , Kosmann-Schwarzbach and Magri , Vaisman  and others. The set of our functions $`\{f_j\}`$ can be expressed, polynomially, through the traces of powers of the intertwining operator corresponding to the Nijenhuis tensor.

Now let us take $`M=X`$ to be a coadjoint orbit in $`k^{}`$, which we assume to be a compact hermitian symmetric space. We take $`\pi _s=\pi `$ \- the Kirillov-Kostant-Souriau symplectic structure and $`\pi _b=\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ \- the Bruhat-Poisson structure, which is obtained via an identification of $`X`$ with $`K/(PK)`$ as in Introduction. Under this identification, $`\pi `$ is $`K`$-invariant. The following was first proved in :

###### PROPOSITION 2.2

If $`X`$ is a hermitian symmetric space as above, then the Poisson structures $`\pi `$ and $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ are compatible.

Proof. (J.-H. Lu) Let $`X`$ be a generating vector field for the $`K`$-action. Clearly, the $`K`$-invariance of $`\pi `$ implies that $`L_X\pi =0`$. Since $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ came from $`kk`$ by applying left and right actions of $`K`$, $`L_X\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ is obtained from $`\delta (X)`$ by applying the $`K`$-action. Here, $`\delta (X)`$ is the co-bracket of $`X`$, which is an element of $`kk`$, since we can view $`X`$ as an element of $`k`$. Therefore, $`L_X\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ is a sum of wedges of generating vector fields for the action of $`K`$. Accordingly,

$$[L_X\pi _{\mathrm{}},\pi ]=0,$$

which in turn implies that

$$L_X[\pi _{\mathrm{}},\pi ]=0,$$

and thus $`[\pi _{\mathrm{}},\pi ]`$ is a $`K`$-invariant 3-vector field on $`X`$. When $`X`$ is a hermitian symmetric space, there are none such (since the nil-radical of the corresponding parabolic group is abelian), so it must be zero. $``$

Therefore, we have the following

###### PROPOSITION 2.3

Let $`X`$ be a coadjoint orbit in $`K`$. Assume that $`X`$ is a hermitian symmetric space of complex dimension $`n`$. The above recipe yields $`n`$ functions $`(f_1`$, …, $`f_n)`$ on $`X`$, which are in involution with respect to either $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ or $`\pi `$.

The functions $`(f_1`$, …, $`f_n)`$ that we have constructed turn out to be related to the Gelfand-Tsetlin coordinates in the case when $`K=SU(n)`$, as we will see later on. In the next section we will carry explicit computations of these functions on the projective spaces.

## 3 Computations for the projective spaces.

Let $`CP^n`$ be a complex projective space of (complex) dimension $`n`$, and let $`[Z_0:Z_1:\mathrm{}:Z_n]`$ be a homogeneous coordinate system on it. We use the standard Fubini-Study form $`\omega `$ for $`\omega _s`$ and the following description of $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ obtained by Lu Jiang-Hua in  and . First, we need Lu’s coordinates on the largest Bruhat cell, where $`Z_00`$ and we let $`z_i=Z_i/Z_0`$:

$$y_i:=\frac{z_i}{\sqrt{1+|z_{i+1}|^2+\mathrm{}+|z_n|^2}},1in.$$

Lu’s coordinates are not holomorphic, but convenient for the Bruhat Poisson structure, which now assumes the following form

$$\pi _{\mathrm{}}=\sqrt{1}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}(1+|y_i|^2)_{y_i}_{\overline{y}_i}.$$

In order to be able to compute with $`\omega `$ and $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$, we need to move to the polar variables $`r_i,\varphi _j`$ defined by $`z_i=r_ie^{\sqrt{1}\varphi _i}`$ and eventually to the momentum map variables $`x_i,\varphi _j`$ defined by

$$x_i=\delta _{1,i}\frac{r_i^2}{1+r_1^2+\mathrm{}r_n^2}.$$

These variable are just a slight distortion (for later convenience) of the standard coordinates on $`R^n`$ for the momentum map associated with the maximal compact torus action on $`CP^n`$. One of the advantages of using this coordinate system is that the Fubini-Study symplectic structure has the following simple form:

$$\omega =\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}dx_id\varphi _i.$$

In fact, the simplest form for the Bruhat Poisson structure is also achieved in this coordinate system.

###### PROPOSITION 3.1

The Bruhat Poisson structure $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ on $`CP^n`$ can be written in the coordinate system $`(x_j,\varphi _i)`$ as

$$\pi _{\mathrm{}}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\mathrm{\Theta }_i_{\varphi _i},$$

where

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_i=(x_1+\mathrm{}+x_i)_{x_i}+\underset{j=i+1}{\overset{n}{}}x_j_{x_j}.$$

Proof. The proof of this statement is purely computational. One can introduce auxiliary variables $`q_i=\mathrm{log}(1+|y_i|^2)`$, and use those to write

$$\pi _{\mathrm{}}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}_{q_i}_{\varphi _i}$$

\- the action-angle form for $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$. Eventually, one can establish the following relations: $`x_1=e^{q_1}`$, and for $`j>1`$,

$$x_j=e^{(q_1+\mathrm{}+q_j)}e^{(q_1+\mathrm{}+q_{j1})}.$$

The rest is straightforward. $``$

Now, one can see that the simple linear and triagonal form of $`\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$ makes the computation of the functions $`\{f_i\}`$ extremely simple. We will introduce the following linear change of variables on $`R^n`$:

$$c_k=\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}x_i.$$

In these variables, the set of functions $`\{f_i\}`$ looks as follows.

###### THEOREM 3.2

The integrals $`f_i`$ (up to constant multiples) arising from the bihamiltonian structure $`(\pi _s,\pi _{\mathrm{}})`$ on $`CP^n`$ are given by the elementary polynomials in $`(c_1,\mathrm{},c_n)`$:

$$f_1=c_1+\mathrm{}+c_n,$$

$$f_j=\underset{i_1<\mathrm{}<i_j}{}c_{i_1}\mathrm{}c_{i_j},$$

$$f_n=c_1\mathrm{}c_n.$$

The explicit nature of these integrals is essential in looking at the relation with the certain natural flows . The hamiltonian $`f_1`$ in terms of the momentum map variables is given by

$$f_1=nx_1+(n1)x_2+\mathrm{}+2x_{n1}+x_n.$$

Then the gradient in the momentum simplex has coordinates $`\lambda _i=n+1i`$. Those numbers also are the weights assigned to the vertices (which correspond to the centers of the Bruhat cells). Thus we arrive to

###### THEOREM 3.3

The above flow on $`CP^n`$ with eigenvalues consecutive integers from $`1`$ to $`n`$ determines the standard Bruhat cell decomposition.

## 4 Relation with Gelfand-Tsetlin coordinates.

When $`X=Gr(k)`$ \- the grassmannian of $`k`$-planes in $`C^{n+1}`$, we have obtained $`k(nk+1)`$ functions in involution on $`X`$. Let us recall the standard embedding

$$\mathrm{\Psi }:F_nGr(1)\times \mathrm{}\times Gr(n),$$

where $`F_n`$ is the manifold of full flags in $`C^{n+1}`$, and the locus of the embedding is given by the incidence relations. This embedding respects the KKS Kaehler structures on the manifolds involved, if we would like to view them as coadjoint orbits in $`k^{}`$. Moreover, this embedding is equivariant with respect to the $`K=SU(n+1)`$-action.

Recall the Gelfand-Tsetlin system on $`F_n`$. We fix the orbit type of $`F_n`$, i.e. we fix the eigenvalues $`\sqrt{1}\lambda _i`$ and order them, so $`\lambda _1>\lambda _2>\mathrm{}>\lambda _{n+1}`$. For convinience and easier visualization, we will assume that $`\lambda _{n+1}=0`$ (so all the eigenvalues are non-negative), which will correspond to working with $`u_{n+1}^{}`$ rather than with $`su_{n+1}^{}`$. For convenience, we also identify the Lie algebra $`u_k`$ with its dual via $`\mathrm{Tr}(AB)`$. The Gelfand-Tsetlin system looks like , :

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}\lambda _1& >& \lambda _2& >& \mathrm{}& >& \lambda _n& >& 0\\ & \mu _1^1& & \mu _2^1& & \mathrm{}& & \mu _n^1& \\ & & & \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& & & \\ & & & \mu _1^{n1}& & \mu _2^{n1}& & & \\ & & & & \mu _1^n& & & & \end{array},$$

where the $`i`$-th row corresponds to the projection $`u_{n+1}^{}u_{n+2i}^{}`$, which is dual to the embedding $`U(n+2i)U(n+1)`$ in the left upper corner. The eigenvalues $`\mu _i^j`$ together with $`\lambda _i`$’s satisfy the interlacing property.

The picture above can be adapted to any orbit, in particular to $`Gr(k)`$, where we would take $`\lambda _1=\mathrm{}=\lambda _k>0`$, and other $`\lambda `$’s equal to zero. When $`k`$ varies from $`1`$ to $`n`$, the picture above acquires more and more non-zero elements. At each step, while going from level $`k`$ to $`k+1`$, we will get new integrals on $`Gr(k+1)`$, which we can pull back to $`F_n`$ using $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$.

Our goal is to relate the integrals $`f_j`$, that we obtained in Section 3 using the bi-hamiltonian approach on hermitian symmetric spaces, and the Gelfand-Tsetlin coordinates. We will start working with $`M=CP^n`$, the complex projective space.

Let $`B`$ be the $`(n+1)\times (n+1)`$ matrix, representing an element of $`u(n+1)^{}`$ such that the only non-zero element of $`B`$ is $`\sqrt{1}\lambda `$, located in the very left upper place. The coadjoint orbit $`𝒪_B`$ of $`B`$ is isomorphic to $`CP^n`$, where the identification goes as follows. Any element in the coadjoint orbit of $`B`$ can be viewed as $`ABA^1`$, where $`AU(n+1)`$. Let $`(a_{ij})`$ be the entries of $`A`$. Then the identification

$$w:𝒪_BCP^n$$

is given by

$$w(ABA^1)=[a_{11}:a_{21}:\mathrm{}:a_{n+1,1}],$$

in terms of a homogeneous coordinate system $`[Z_0:\mathrm{}:Z_n]`$ on $`CP^n`$. We suspect that the following is well-known, and in any case, is not hard to compute, that the Gelfand-Tsetlin coordinates are:

$$\mu _r^k=0\mathrm{for}r1,$$

$$\mu _1^k=\lambda (x_1+\mathrm{}+x_{nk+1}),$$

where $`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)`$ are the momentum map coordinates that we used in the previous section. We arrive to the conclusion that the Gelfand-Tsetlin coordinates $`\{\mu _1^k\}`$ coincide (up to the multiple of $`\lambda `$, which we can assume equal to one) with the coordinates $`\{c_k\}`$ introduced in the previous section. Now, it remains to notice that the Theorem 3.2 from the previous Section immediately yields

###### THEOREM 4.1

The complete family of integrals in involution $`\{f_i\}`$ on $`CP^n`$ obtained using the bi-hamiltonian approach with respect to the Bruhat Poisson structure and an invariant symplectic structure are expressed by the elementary polynomials in the Gelfand-Tsetlin coordinates.

We prove a similar result for other hermitian symmetric spaces in a forthcoming paper .

## 5 Comparison to the Lenard scheme.

Recall the following result . If $`\alpha \pi _0+\beta \pi _1`$ is a Poisson pencil on a manifold $`M`$, and $`V`$ a vector field, preserving this pencil, then there exists a sequence of smooth functions $`\{g_i\}`$ on $`M`$, such that $`g_1`$ is the Hamiltonian of $`V`$ with respect to $`\pi _0`$ and the vector field of the $`\pi _0`$-hamiltonian $`f_j`$ is the same as the vector field of the $`\pi _1`$-hamiltonian $`f_{j+1}`$:

$$i_{df_j}\pi _0=i_{df_{j+1}}\pi _1.$$

Moreover, the functions in the family $`\{f_j\}`$ are in involution with respect to both $`\pi _0`$ and $`\pi _1`$.

Our goal in this section is to show that if we start with $`M=CP^n`$, and take the pencil $`(\pi _s,\pi _{\mathrm{}})`$ as before, then there is a natural choice of $`V`$ on $`CP^n`$ leading to a completely integrable systems, and the integrals $`\{g_j\}`$ in question can be easily expressed in terms of the coordinates $`(c_1,\mathrm{},c_n)`$ that we introduced in Section 3.

It is a matter of a simple computation that if we start with a hamiltonian $`g_1=a_1x_1+\mathrm{}+a_nx_n`$, where $`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)`$ are the momentum map coordinates as before, then the corresponding initial vector field $`V`$ is given by

$$V=i_{dg_1}\pi _{\mathrm{}}=\underset{j}{}[a_j(x_1+\mathrm{}x_j)+a_{j+1}x_{j+1}+\mathrm{}+a_nx_n]_{\varphi _j}.$$

From this, one can compute $`g_2={\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_j}{2}}x_j^2+{\displaystyle \underset{l<k}{}}a_kx_lx_k,`$ etc. An interesting choice for $`g_1`$ turns out to be

$$g_1=c_1+\mathrm{}+c_n=nx_1+(n1)x_2+\mathrm{}+x_n,$$

which coincides with $`f_1`$ from Section 3. The reason for this choice is

###### PROPOSITION 5.1

The Lenard scheme associated to the Poisson pencil $`(\pi _{\mathrm{}}`$, $`\pi _s)`$ on $`CP^n`$ which starts with $`g_1=c_1+\mathrm{}+c_n`$ and

$$V=\underset{j}{}[(nj+1)(x_1+\mathrm{}+x_j)+(nj)x_{j+1}+\mathrm{}+2x_{n1}+x_n]_{\varphi _j},$$

yields

$$g_k=c_1^k+c_2^k+\mathrm{}+c_n^k,$$

which determines a completely integrable bi-hamiltonian system on $`CP^n`$.

Proof. With all the explicit formulas that we have presented in this paper, the proof is a simple computation. $``$

We should remark, that the constants $`(a_1,\mathrm{},a_n)`$ for the first hamiltonian in the Lenard scheme have to be chosen with care for two reasons. First, the computations are not simple for an arbitrary choice. Second, as the next example shows, we do not always arrive to a completely integrable system.

Example. If one takes $`g_1=x_1+\mathrm{}+x_n`$, and $`V=_j(x_1+\mathrm{}+x_n)_{\varphi _j}`$, then applying the above scheme, one would obtain

$$g_k=(x_1+\mathrm{}+x_n)^k=(g_1)^k.$$

The differentials of all functions in this family are clearly linearly dependent.


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# ESO Imaging Survey

## 1 Introduction

Deep multi-wavelength observations of selected regions of the sky from space and ground-based facilities, combined with spectrographic observations from large-aperture telescopes, offer the most promising means to probe the distant universe and study in a comprehensive way the evolution of galaxies and large-scale structures over a broad interval of look-back time. Preliminary steps towards this goal are already underway with the completion of deep X-ray observations of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S; $`\alpha =03^h32^m28^s`$ and $`\delta =27\mathrm{°}48\mathrm{}30\mathrm{}`$; Giacconi et al. 2000). These observations will eventually be complemented by observations with HST, XMM and SIRTF as well as VLT.

Foreseeing the need for ground-based multi-color data the Working Group for public surveys at ESO recommended the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS, Renzini & da Costa, 1997) project to undertake deep, optical/infrared observations of the HDF-S and CDF-S regions. Original observations of these fields were conducted in 1998 (da Costa et al. 1998; Rengelink et al. 1998, to be superseded by da Costa et al. 2001; Benoist et al. 2001a) and fully calibrated images, source catalogs and high-redshift galaxy candidates were immediately made public prior to the Science Verification of the first unit of the VLT. However, these observations covered only a small fraction of the field of view of Chandra, requiring the original coverage of EIS to be enlarged. Full coverage of the CDF-S $`\stackrel{<}{}350`$ square arcmin field and flanking regions in optical and infrared is one of the primary goals of the Deep Public Survey (DPS) now being conducted by EIS. DPS consists of two parts: first, a deep, optical multi-passband ($`UBVRI`$) survey reaching limiting magnitudes $`m_{AB}26`$ mag covering three distinct strips (DEEP1, DEEP2 and DEEP3). These stripes consist of four adjacent pointings (denoted by a-d in decreasing order of right ascension) of the wide-field imager (WFI), mounted on the ESO/MPG 2.2m telescope at La Silla, yielding an area of one square degree each; second, the contiguous coverage in the infrared passbands $`JK_s`$ of two distinct regions (DEEP-2c and DEEP-3a) 450 square arcmin each. The infrared part of DPS is a joint effort between the EIS team and an external group of scientist from ESO member states. Further details about DPS can be found at the URL ”http://www.eso.org/eis”. The primary goal of the survey is to produce a data set from which statistical samples of galaxies can be drawn to study the large scale structures at high redshift. These data should also be valuable for many other areas of investigation, in particular for cross-identification with X-ray sources detected from the deep X-ray exposure of Chandra.

The purpose of the present paper is to describe and present the data from the new infrared observations of the CDF-S region. The data reported here complement those obtained by the original EIS-DEEP survey (Rengelink et al. 1998), which are being re-analyzed and will be presented in a separate paper (Benoist et al. 2001a). Section 2 reviews the overall observing strategy and describes the observations. Section 3 discusses the techniques employed in the data reduction and the photometric and astrometric calibration of the images. Section 4 presents the photometric parameters of the sources detected on each image corresponding to different pointings and passband. Due to time constraints other products such as image mosaics, catalogs extracted from them, optical/infrared color catalogs, statistical samples and lists containing other targets of potential interest will be presented elsewhere. Even though the goal of the present paper is not to interpret the data, Section 5 presents the results of comparisons between the present observations and those of other authors. This is done for the sole purpose of assessing the quality of the astrometry and photometry of the present data set. Finally, a brief summary is presented in Section 6.

## 2 Observations

Infrared observations in the near-infrared passbands $`J`$ and $`K_s`$ were obtained using the SOFI camera (Moorwood, Cuby & Lidman 1998) mounted on the New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla. SOFI is equipped with a Rockwell 10242 detector that, when used together with its large field objective, provides images with a pixel scale of 0.29 arcsec, and a field of view of about $`4.9\times 4.9`$ square arcmin. The infrared pointings were chosen to produce a contiguous coverage of a $`4\times 4`$ mosaic when combined with those of EIS-DEEP. They were also required to produce sufficient overlap between adjacent pointings to enable the construction of an image mosaic, avoiding severe decrease in the effective exposure time due to the jitter pattern used and enabling a common photometric zero-point to be determined. The inner $`2\times 2`$ subset correspond to the EIS-DEEP pointings reported by Benoist et al. (2001a). The remaining 12 pointings are those observed as part of the present survey which are listed in Table 1. The table gives: in column (1) the identification of each tile in the mosaic represented by the indices $`(i,j)`$, where $`i`$ decreases with declination and $`j`$ decreases with right ascension; and in columns (2) and (3) the J2000 coordinates of the pointing. A schematic view of the coverage is illustrated in Figure 1 which shows the relative positions of the region with $`UBVRI`$ coverage, the EIS-DEEP infrared data and the newly accumulated data. In the convention described above the pointings with (2,2) (2,3), (3,2) and (3,3), correspond to those obtained by the EIS-DEEP program. The original goal of the observations was to reach $`5\sigma `$ magnitudes of $`J_{AB}`$=23.5 and $`K_{AB}`$=23.1 requiring a total integration time of 1800 sec and 7000 sec in $`J`$ and $`K_s`$, respectively, as estimated from the SOFI exposure time calculator. Following a Working Group (WG) recommendation, the total integration time of 8400 sec was later split into 3600 sec in $`J`$ and 4800 sec in $`K_s`$ to reach $`(JK_s)2`$ (Vega system) at the limiting magnitude of the survey. The $`J`$ exposures were taken as a sequence of 60 one-minute exposures, while the $`K_s`$ observations were split into two sequences of 40 one-minute exposures. However, during the reductions images with very high noise level and/or unexplained gradients in the background were detected and rejected from further processing. Therefore, in some cases the effective exposure time may vary with respect to those originally planned (see Section 5). In other cases, additional exposures were obtained for a pointing. These additional exposures typically originate from aborted exposure sequences, which were later re-observed in their entirety.

A total of 16 nights were allocated to the infrared part of DPS split into three runs: one in period 64 and two in period 66. The observations was carried out for both the DEEP2c and the DEEP3a regions, and a summary of the observations carried out in the DEEP2c region is given in Table 2, which lists: in column (1) the date of the observations; in column (2) the pointing as defined above; in column (3) the filters used; and in columns (4) and (5) the range and average seeing during the night as measured by the seeing monitor at La Silla. The observations were conducted under fairly good weather and seeing ($`\stackrel{<}{}1.1`$ arcsec) conditions, nearly all in photometric nights, except for occasional light cirrus. Unfortunately, the last run was cancelled due to technical problems with the NTT. At the time of writing the $`J`$ pointing (4,4) had been observed in service mode and will be made available as soon as possible.

The infrared observations were jittered relative to the centers given above in order to estimate the sky level from the data themselves. The procedure consists of a series of short exposures with small position offsets from the target position. The jitter strategy has been implemented as a standard observing template (AutoJitter) for the SOFI instrument. Each exposure consisted of the average of six ten-second sub-exposures. Using this template, offsets are generated randomly within a square box of a specified size, chosen originally to be 40 arcsec, approximately 10% of the SOFI detector field of view. This value was later increased to 70 arcsec for the November 2000 run to improve the background estimate. These offsets are constrained so that all distances between pointings, in a series of 15 consecutive pointings, are larger than 9 arcsec.

## 3 Data Reduction

### 3.1 Image Processing

The infrared images were reduced using a new routine designed for the EIS pipeline for automated reduction of optical/infrared images (Vandame et al. 2001). The routine produces fully reduced images and weight-maps carrying out bias subtraction, flatfielding, de-fringing and subtraction of the background, first-order pixel-based image stacking (allowing for translation, rotation and stretching of the image) and astrometric calibration. De-fringing, sky-subtraction and elimination of image artifacts are done adopting a two-pass procedure: first, a preliminary image is obtained by stacking a set of sky-subtracted frames, with the background estimated using a running median; second, objects are identified in this stacked image and masks are created; finally, the de-fringing/sky-subtraction step is repeated with the object masks mapped to the jittered position of each individual image. Deviant values are sigma-clipped and masked pixels are neglected. More details about the package will be presented when it is made publicly available (Vandame et al. 2001).

The primary reason for developing an entire new code was to improve on the photometric accuracy of faint objects which had been achieved in the earlier processing of the EIS-DEEP data. Further analysis of these data carried out by the EIS team and by other users (Cimatti 1999; see also the eclipse home page111http://www.eso.org/projects/aot/eclipse/ and Devillard 1999 for more information) revealed a trend to underestimate the flux of objects, in some cases of $``$0.2 mag at faint magnitudes. Another important advantage of the new software package is that it produces weight-maps which are critical for the construction of image mosaics.

The effect of the two-step procedure is illustrated in Figure 2 which shows the sky-subtracted image obtained after the two-pass sky-estimation (left panel) and the residual after subtracting the first-pass image from the two-pass one (right panel). It can clearly be seen that a single pass leads to the loss of a significant fraction of flux leading to biases in the estimated magnitudes of up to $`\stackrel{<}{}0.3`$ mag. This effect is caused by the biased sky-estimation in the outer regions of the objects where the faint light level contribution cannot be distinguished from the sky-background in the individual images. This effect is clearly visible in the lower right corner where the background around the bright galaxy is too high in the first pass estimate. Furthermore regions with a high density of individual faint sources, none of which can be detected prior to the final stacking, would contribute to the background in the single pass approach.

### 3.2 Astrometric Calibration

The astrometric calibration of the infrared frames was performed using as the reference catalog objects extracted from optical images obtained over the same region (Arnouts et al. 2001) using the method developed by Djamdji et al. (1993). The method is based on a multi-resolution decomposition of images using wavelet transforms (MVM) developed over the years by Bijaoui and collaborators and extensively applied in remote sensing. An implementation of these algorithms to stack images, referred to as MVM-astrometry, has been done for EIS. This package has proven to be efficient and robust for pipeline reductions. The estimated internal accuracy of this technique is about half a pixel ($``$0.15 arcsec). The optical images were calibrated relative to objects drawn from the pre-release version of the Guide Star Catalog-II (GSC-II). The GSC-II (McLean et al. 2001) is based on multi-passbands all-sky photographic plate surveys including the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I-II), the SERC and the ESO Red Survey. The astrometric calibration of GSC-II has been obtained relative to Hipparcos (Perryman et al. 1997) and Tycho catalogs (Høg et al. 1997) and the ACT (Urban, Corbin & Wycoff 1998).

This two-step approach to astrometrically calibrate the infrared images has been taken for two main reasons. First, by using the deep astrometrically calibrated optical images as the reference the number of objects typically available within a SOFI field ($`\stackrel{>}{}150`$) is a factor of four larger than the typical number of GSC-II reference stars ($`40`$). Therefore, this procedure provides a better constraint for a second-order polynomial fit. Second, this approach ensures a robust relative astrometry between the optical and infrared images, overcoming the problems identified in the earlier release of the CDF-S data. As pointed out by Benoist et al. (2001b) small relative shifts between the position of objects extracted from the optical and infrared images significantly affected the color catalog for that data set. The new procedure being adopted here should prevent similar problems from occuring in the future.

### 3.3 Photometric Calibration

The photometric calibration for each night is based on observations of standard stars taken from Persson et al. (1998). Typically two to seven stars were observed over a range of airmasses. For all nights independent photometric solutions were obtained with errors of $`\stackrel{<}{}0.03`$ mag in both passbands and negligible color terms. Examining deviant measurements showed that some of the selected standard stars (at least 3 cases) may be variable. A more careful analysis of these cases will be presented elsewhere.

Using the individually calibrated images, the consistency between their respective zero-points was examined considering the magnitude differences of pairs of objects located in regions of overlap. An average magnitude difference was then computed for each set of overlapping frames yielding a mean value of $`0.03`$ mag and a scatter of $`\stackrel{<}{}0.09`$ mag for both bands. A more detailed discussion of this point will be presented in a forthcoming paper when the complete data set has been analyzed and a final mosaic is created.

### 3.4 Image Products

The images being released are fully astrometrically (COE projection) and photometrically calibrated (normalized to 1 sec exposure time). The provided FITS files include both the pixel and weight maps as FITS extensions. The astrometric information is stored in the world coordinate system (WCS) keywords in the FITS headers. Similarly the photometric calibration is provided by the zero-point and its error available in the header keywords ZP and ZP\_ERR. The zero-point includes the normalized zero-point of the photometric solution and the atmospheric extinction correction. In the header one can also find a product identification number (P\_ID) which should always be used as reference. The headers also provide information on the number of stacked frames and the on-source total integration time. Additionally the seeing obtained by measuring the FWHM of bright stars in the final stacked images is stored in the header keyword SEE\_IMA.

An example of a final image and corresponding weight map is shown in figure 3 for one pointing in $`K_s`$. Note that the size of the image ($`5.8\times 5.8`$ square arcmin) is much larger than that obtained using the earlier version of the EIS pipeline which clipped the image to the best sampled region. Comparing the image and the weight map one sees how the noise increases at the edges as the effective exposure time decreases. However, proper use of the weight maps facilitates and greatly increases the efficiency of building up infrared mosaics.

It is worth mentioning that, a satellite track visible at the north-eastern corner in one of the $`J`$-band images (pointing $`(2,4)`$) led to the masking of a large region which caused the rejection of a large fraction of the frame from the final stack. Proper use of the Hough transform, as currently done for the optical images, will be used to correct this effect in future data products.

## 4 Source Lists

Source extraction was performed using the SExtractor software (Bertin & Arnouts 1996; ver. 2.2.1). Detection was carried out separately using the co-added image of each passband and field. The main parameters in the detection are the smoothing kernel, taken to be a Gaussian with a FWHM equal to 0.8 of that of the PSF measured on the frame; the SExtractor detection threshold, taken to be 0.8; and the minimum number of pixels above the detection threshold, taken to be 7 pixels for SOFI images. As an illustration, the tabulation of the first 40 entries in one of the $`J`$-band source catalogs is presented in Table 3. All magnitudes are given in the $`AB`$ system, using $`J_{AB}=J+0.90`$ and $`K_{AB}=K_s+1.84`$. The table lists:

Column (1): the EIS identification name

Columns (2) and (3): right ascension and declination (J2000.0);

Columns (4)-(9): total, isophotal and aperture (3 arcsec diameter) magnitudes and respective errors. The first two magnitudes correspond to the mag\_auto and mag\_iso magnitudes measured by SExtractor. The magnitudes have been corrected for Galactic extinction taken from Schlegel et al. (1998). The errors are those estimated by SExtractor and include only the shot-noise of the measured source and background counts. Only objects detected with signal to noise $`S/N3`$ (based on the isophotal magnitude errors) are included.

Column (10): an estimate of the $`S/N`$ of the detection, by the inverse of the errors estimated for the isophotal magnitude;

Columns (11): the isophotal area $`A`$ of the object in square arcsec;

Column (12): the half-light radius $`r_h`$ in arcsec;

Column (13) and (14): minor to major-axis ratio and the position angle;

Column (15): the stellarity index computed by SExtractor;

Column (16): SExtractor flags (see Bertin 1998)

Column (17): EIS flags; these flags are used to identify objects in regions with very low weight or close to bright objects. Objects detected in regions with weight $`40\%`$ of the maximum weight (proportional to the total integration time) and not affected by bright stars have EIS flag=0. Objects with weight $`<40\%`$, located at the edges of the frame, have EIS flag=1. Finally EIS flag=2 indicates that the object is located in a region masked out due to the presence of a bright object.

Similar tables for each pointing and passband are available upon request in ASCII format. Catalogs for the mosaic and optical/infrared color catalogs will be distributed as soon as they become available. Note that besides distributing catalogs in tabular form as done here, catalogs in FITS formats will become part of the distribution of final products. These catalogs will include considerable more information such as the parameters defining the trimmed and masked regions used to determine the EIS flags. The final catalogs will be described by Arnouts et al. (2001).

## 5 Discussion

The characteristics of the data obtained by the present infrared survey are summarized in Table 4 which lists: in column (1) the identification of the pointing; in column (2) the filter; in column (3) the effective exposure time for each final image; in column (4) the seeing of the final co-added image; in column (5) the number of detected objects with $`S/N3`$ as described above; in columns (6) and (7) the $`5\sigma `$ and $`3\sigma `$ limiting $`AB`$ magnitude measured within an aperture $`2\times `$FWHM. At the $`5\sigma `$ limiting magnitudes the fraction of spurious objects is estimated to be $`5\%`$ and $`11\%`$ in $`J`$ and $`K`$, respectively, rapidly rising to over 50% at the $`3\sigma `$ limit. The fraction of spurious objects was estimated by creating catalogs from the survey images multiplied by $`1`$. The mock images were then used as input to the catalog production and from the comparison between the catalogs of the mock and real objects the fraction of false-positives was estimated.

In order to externally verify the results obtained here the source list presented above was cross-correlated with that available from the 2MASS survey (Cutri et al. 2000) using a search radius of 1 arcsec. A total of 80 objects were found in common and their relative positions and magnitudes (for objects considered “good” in both catalogs) were computed and are shown in Figures 4 and 5. Apart from an offset of about 0.33 arcsec in right ascension one finds good agreement between the astrometric calibrations yielding a scatter of $`\stackrel{<}{}0.23`$ arcsec. Assuming similar errors for both data sets one finds an astrometric accuracy of $`0.16`$ arcsec consistent with the estimated internal accuracy of the technique adopted in the present work. The asymmetry of the distribution reflects a small systematic increase of the right ascension residuals noted near the eastern edge of the region. This effect is likely due to the large offset of the CDF-S position relative to the center of the original plate used for GSC-II object extraction. This problem is being addressed for the final release of the catalog. Considering objects brighter than $`J=16.0`$ and $`K_s=15.0`$ (Vega system), roughly corresponding to the 2MASS limiting magnitudes, the measured magnitudes of the two data sets are in good agreement, except for three outliers, showing a mean offset of 0.016 mag in $`J`$ and $`0.031`$ mag in $`K_s`$. The scatter is found to be 0.077 mag and 0.14 mag, respectively, consistent with the estimated uncertainty of the overall zero-point (Section 3).

Finally, Figure 6 shows the comparison of galaxy counts as a function of the total magnitude with those obtained for other data sets. The derived slopes of the counts are $`0.33\pm 0.02`$ in $`J`$ and $`0.35\pm 0.02`$ in $`K`$, in good agreement with those obtained by Saracco et al. (1999) as well as other studies. The galaxy counts shown in the figure is the mean counts obtained averaging all the individual catalogs and the error bar is the scatter. The individual catalogs were obtained drawing objects with stellarity index less than 0.95 or fainter than 20.5 mag and only including objects with $`S/N>3`$. Bad objects were discarded based on the SExtractor and EIS flags.

## 6 Summary

This paper presents the first results of the infrared data accumulated by the ongoing Deep Public Survey being conducted by the EIS program. The paper describes the observations and the first set of products being publicly released including fully calibrated pixel maps and source lists covering the CDF-S region. Given the current interest in this area of the sky it was decided to release the data in the simple format presented. Other derived products will be described in forthcoming papers of this series. Hopefully, the source lists presented here will be of immediate value for cross-identification with X-ray sources.

###### Acknowledgements.

The Guide Star Catalogue-II is produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute in collaboration with the Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino. Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under contract NAS5-26555. Additional support is provided by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, the Italian Council for Research in Astronomy, European Southern Observatory, Space telescope European Coordinating Facility, the International GEMINI project and the European Space Agency Astrophysics Division. The UK Schmidt Telescope was operated by the Royal Observatory Edimburgh, with funding from the UK Science and Engineering Research Council (later the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council), until 1988 June, and thereafter by the Anglo-Australian Observatory
This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.
We thank all of those directly or indirectly involved in the EIS effort. Our special thanks to M. Scodeggio for his continuing assistance in a variety of issues, A. Bijaoui for allowing us to use tools developed by him and collaborators over the years and past EIS team members for building the foundations of this program. We would also like to thank A. Renzini and the members of the Working Group for Public Surveys.


text:
# Minimal Absorption Measurements

## I Introduction

We examine the possible advantages of using the quantum properties of light for making images of photosensitive objects, i.e. objects that can be damaged by the photons that are used to make the image. The recent advances in quantum information processing suggest that using the quantum nature of light may provide advantages over classical imaging techniques. In particular Elitzur and Vaidman have proposed “interaction-free measurements” (generalized in ) that can determine whether a completely absorbing object is present or absent with infinitesimal probability that the object absorbs a photon. Absorption-free measurements (as we prefer to call them, rather than “interaction-free”, since our terminology reduces the number of inverted commas) have been further generalized in  to the case where the object is semi-transparent. And in  it was shown that an interferometric setup is useful when one wants to determine simultaneously the probability that a semitransparent photosensitive object absorbs a photon and the phase it induces on a photon that traverses it but is not absorbed (i.e. one wants to measure both the real and imaginary part of the transparency $`\alpha `$ introduced below).

Thus quantum mechanics may provide a powerful new way of making images of photosensitive objects, and this has motivated various experimental implementations of absorption-free measurements . However, some doubt has been cast on the wider applicability of these methods by the finding that it is impossible to distinguish unambiguously between two semitransparent objects (neither of which is totally transparent) without a certain non-zero probability that the objects absorb a photon .

In this note we explore a different problem from that considered in  which is probably more important in practice. We consider the case where one wants to determine the transparency of an object with high resolution while minimizing the number of photons absorbed by the object. We shall show in this case that, except for certain specialised tasks, using the quantum mechanical properties of light does not offer significant advantages over more traditional schemes such as counting absorbed photons or simple interferometric procedures that use one photon at a time.

The general scenario that we have in mind is an object which is characterized by a position-dependent transparency $`\alpha (x)`$. Here $`x`$ is a coordinate on the surface of the object, and $`\alpha `$ is the complex amplitude for a photon not to be absorbed by the object. The aim is determine $`\alpha (x)`$ to high resolution while minimizing the number of photons absorbed by the object. A “minimal absorption measurement” is a protocol whose outcome (a set of measurement results) achieves this aim.

This scenario is difficult to analyze in full generality, and hence we simplify it. As a first step, we consider an extreme simplification in which (a) the object consists of only one pixel (i.e. $`x`$ takes only one value), and (b) there are only two possible objects. That is, the transparency of the single pixel can take only two values, $`\alpha _1`$ or $`\alpha _2`$. The task is then to determine which object is present (ie. to determine whether the transparency is $`\alpha _1`$ or $`\alpha _2`$) while absorbing as few photons as possible. We give a bound on the minimum number of photons that must be absorbed if objects are to be distinguished with high probability. This bound is valid for an arbitrary quantum protocol. In the conclusion we mention how this result can be extended to the case where the transparencies can take a continuous range of values.

To state our result in the single pixel case, let $`\alpha =(\alpha _1+\alpha _2)/2`$ be the average of $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$, and let $`\beta _1`$, $`\beta _2`$ be the amplitudes that objects 1 and 2 absorb a photon. Let $`\beta =\sqrt{1|\alpha |^2}`$, so $`\beta `$ is approximately the average of $`|\beta _1|`$, $`|\beta _2|`$. We are interested in the case where the difference of transparencies is small, so we can write $`\alpha _1=\alpha ϵ`$ and $`\alpha _2=\alpha +ϵ`$, where $`ϵ`$ is a small (complex) number satisfying $`|ϵ|\frac{\beta ^2}{2|\alpha |}`$. Let $`P_E`$ denote the probability of making a mistake in identifying the object. Denote by $`\overline{N}_i^{abs}`$ the mean number of absorbed photons in a minimal absorption measurement if object $`i`$ is to be correctly identified with probability greater than $`1P_E`$. Then our main result is the following constraint on $`\overline{N}_1^{abs}`$ and $`\overline{N}_2^{abs}`$:

$$\frac{\overline{N}_1^{abs}+\overline{N}_2^{abs}}{2}\frac{\beta ^4(12\sqrt{P_E(1P_E)})}{2|ϵ|^2}+O(1).$$
(1)
The most important aspect of (1) is that the mean number of absorbed photons increases as $`1/|ϵ|^2`$. In most cases this bound is comparable to the resolution that can be obtained with very simple schemes which do not exploit the full range of possibilities offered by quantum mechanics. Indeed simply counting the number of photons absorbed by the object gives a resolution comparable to the bound of (1), except in the special case where $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ differ only in phase.

When $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ differ only in phase one must use an interferometric protocol. A simple interferometric protocol, in which the photons can either pass through the object or not do so, yields a $`1/ϵ^2`$ dependence of the mean number of absorbed photons, as in (1). However we have only been able to attain the same fourth power dependence on $`\beta `$ as in (1) by modifying the interferometric protocol in such a way that the photon can either pass a large number $`k`$ of times through the object or not pass through it at all.

As a further step, we consider the situation where one aims to distinguish not just the transparencies of one pixel but different patterns of transparency $`\alpha (x)`$ on a set of pixels. We obtain in this case a bound on the minimum number of photons that must be absorbed if objects are to be distinguished with high probability which is similar to the bound obtained in the single pixel case.

We illustrate the multi-pixel situation by an example of a special discrimination task, where a significant decrease in the number of absorbed photons can be obtained by using interferometric protocols that address all the pixels simultaneously, as compared to addressing each pixel individually. This example is based on recent work of Wim van Dam. All transparencies are assumed to be real, i.e. the pixels differ only by the probability that they absorb a photon. We show that a collective measurement of all the pixels decreases the number of absorbed photons, relative to measurements on pixels one by one, by a factor of $`\mathrm{log}(\text{Number of pixels})`$. Similar decreases in the number of absorbed photons when imaging a multi-pixel object have been obtained independently by Adrian Kent and David Wallace.

Finally, we consider some examples which illustrate the limitations of our results. One example is provided by absorption-free measurements in the case $`\alpha _1=1`$ where small differences can be resolved with negligible photon absorption. A second is based on Grover’s algorithm , which allows essentially absorption-free discrimination in some special situations. We explain why these examples escape the limitations of our bound (1).

The paper is organized as follows. The next three sections are concerned with the case of a single pixel and only two objects. Specifically sections II and III present protocols that yield photon-absorption numbers of the same order as our bound (1), and section IV contains the proof of this bound. Sections V and VI are concerned with the general case of a multi-pixel image and many possible objects. Section V obtains an analogous bound to inequality (1) in this more general case, and section VI describes our example in which collective addressing yields a decrease in the number of absorbed photons. Section VII discusses the limitations of our approach, with some examples, and section VIII contains our conclusions and discusses possible extensions of our results.

## II Counting the number of absorbed photons

In this section and the next two, we consider the case where we have a single pixel, and the transparency of this pixel can take only one of two values, $`\alpha _1`$ or $`\alpha _2`$. Let us suppose that one sends, one by one, $`N`$ photons through the unknown object and counts how many pass through it without being absorbed. For object $`i`$ ($`i=1,2`$), this number is distributed according to a binomial of mean $`\mu _i=|\alpha _i|^2N`$ and standard deviation $`\sigma |\alpha \beta |\sqrt{N}`$. The decision strategy that minimizes the probability of error is to compute for which object the observed number of transmitted photons (denoted by $`N^T`$) is most likely, and to guess that that is the correct object. Thus there will be some value $`N^T`$ (with $`\mu _1N^T\mu _2`$) such that if $`N^TN^T`$ one guesses that $`i=1`$ and if $`N^T>N^T`$ one guesses that $`i=2`$ (we have taken $`|\alpha _1|<|\alpha _2|`$).

For small error probability $`P_E`$, the number of photons sent through the object $`N`$ must be large and the two binomials will tend to Gaussians. $`N^T`$ is then approximately equal to $`\frac{\mu _1+\mu _2}{2}`$ and the probability of error is approximately $`P_E\frac{1}{2}(1\text{erf}(\frac{\mu _2\mu _1}{\sqrt{8}\sigma }))`$. This gives $`(\mu _2\mu _1)/2\sigma =\sqrt{2}\gamma (P_E)`$, where $`\gamma (P_E)=\text{erf}^1(12P_E)`$ (so, for instance, $`\gamma =0.91`$ when $`P_E=0.1`$, or $`\gamma =1.65`$ when $`P_E=0.01`$). Hence the mean number of absorbed photons for this protocol is

$$\overline{N}^{abs}=\beta ^2N\frac{2\beta ^4|\alpha |^2\gamma (P_E)^2}{(\alpha \overline{ϵ}+\overline{\alpha }ϵ)^2}.$$
(2)
In the above procedure we have supposed that the photons are sent one by one and that we have a perfect single photon detector at our disposal. We could also have sent a state containing $`N`$ identical photons and measured the number of transmitted photons. This supposes that one can prepare photon number states and measure photon number. In practice it is of course much easier to send as input a coherent state of amplitude $`A`$ and measure the intensity transmitted through the object. In this case one finds that $`\overline{N}^{abs}\beta ^2|\alpha |^2\gamma ^{}(P_E)^2/(\alpha \overline{ϵ}+\overline{\alpha }ϵ)^2`$ where $`\gamma ^{}(P_E)`$ is the analogue of $`\gamma `$ for a Poisson distribution. It is interesting to note that these two procedures differ in the value of the pre-factor ($`\beta ^4`$ or $`\beta ^2`$), the lesser efficiency of using coherent states presumably being due to the uncertain photon number for such states. We note that since all the other protocols discussed in this article use linear optical elements (beam splitters, phase shifters) they can also be implemented using coherent light. In these cases one also expects an increase in the mean number of absorbed photons for the reason just mentioned.

Returning to inequality (2), when $`\alpha `$ and $`ϵ`$ are real this reduces to

$$\overline{N}^{abs}\frac{\beta ^4\gamma (P_E)^2}{2ϵ^2},$$
(3)
so in this real case $`\overline{N}^{abs}`$ is proportional to $`1/|ϵ|^2`$, as in (1). For complex $`\alpha `$ and $`ϵ`$, the denominator in (2) may be much smaller than $`|ϵ|^2`$; in particular, if $`|\alpha _1|=|\alpha _2|`$, so $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ differ only in phase, or equivalently if $`\alpha \overline{ϵ}+\overline{\alpha }ϵ=0`$, then $`\overline{N}^{abs}=\mathrm{}`$, and photon-counting fails. In this situation we need an interferometric procedure that is sensitive to the phase of $`\alpha `$ and $`ϵ`$.

## III Interferometric procedures

We focus on the case where $`|\alpha _1|=|\alpha _2|`$, so simple counting of absorbed photon fails. In this case, one can write $`\alpha _{1,2}=\alpha e^{\pm i\eta }`$, where $`\alpha `$ is real (any global phase can be removed by an appropriate phase shifter placed on the path of the photon sent through the object). Note that $`|\beta |^2=1\alpha ^2=1|\alpha _{1,2}|^2`$ since $`\alpha _{1,2}`$ differ only by a phase. For $`\eta `$ small, this can be rewritten as $`\alpha _{1,2}\alpha \pm i\alpha \eta =\alpha \pm iϵ`$, where $`ϵ=\alpha \eta `$.

A simple interferometric procedure to detect object 1 or 2 consists of a Mach-Zender interferometer with the object located in one of the arms. The transmission and reflection amplitudes at the first beam-splitter are $`1/\sqrt{2}`$, while at the second beam-splitter the transmission amplitude is $`1/\sqrt{2}`$ and the reflection amplitude $`i/\sqrt{2}`$. A photon originally in the state $`|0`$ is sent to $`(|0+|1)/\sqrt{2}`$ by the first beam-splitter. This state then becomes $`(|0+\alpha _i|1)/\sqrt{1+|\alpha _i|^2}`$ through interaction with the object. Finally, after the second beam-splitter, the probability of detecting the photon in arm $`0`$ with object $`i`$ is $`\chi _i=|1+i\alpha _i|^2/2(1+|\alpha _i|^2)`$.

The idea is to send $`N`$ photons one by one through the interferometer, count the number of times the detection of a photon in arm $`0`$ occurs, and to distinguish objects $`1`$ and $`2`$ by these counts. The mean number of measurement outcome is $`\mu _i=N\chi _i`$, so that $`\mu _2\mu _12Nϵ/(1+\alpha ^2)`$. The standard deviation of the distribution of these counts is $`\sigma \sqrt{N\chi (1\chi )}`$, where $`\chi =|1+i\alpha |^2/2(1+\alpha ^2)=1/2`$. Applying the same criterion for distinguishability as in section II, one finds $`\overline{N}^{abs}=\gamma ^2\beta ^2(1+\alpha ^2)/2ϵ^2`$, so $`\overline{N}^{abs}`$ is again proportional to $`1/|ϵ|^2`$.

Note, however, that there is a factor of $`\beta ^2`$ missing, compared to the bound, $`\overline{N}^{abs}O(\beta ^4/|ϵ|^2)`$ of (1), and this means that the above simple interferometric method diverges from the multi-photon bound as $`\alpha `$ tends to 1 and $`\beta `$ to zero. To recover the correct order in $`\beta `$, we simply let the photon pass $`k`$ times through the object before the second beam-splitter instead of just once. The probability of detecting it in arm 0 is then $`\chi _i=|1+i(\alpha _i)^k|^2/2(1+|\alpha _i|^{2k})`$. Counting the number of times detection occurs gives $`\mu _2\mu _12Nk\alpha ^{k1}ϵ/(1+\alpha ^{2k})`$ and $`\chi 1/2`$. We are interested in the case where $`\alpha `$ is close to 1. Writing $`\alpha =1\delta `$, with $`\delta `$ small, and taking $`k=1/\delta `$, we find $`\mu _2\mu _12Nϵ/\delta (e+e^1)`$. The total absorption probability is $`\frac{1}{2}(1\alpha ^{2k})\frac{1}{2}(1e^2)`$. Thus $`\overline{N}^{abs}O(\delta ^2/ϵ^2)`$, and since $`\beta ^2=1(1\delta )^22\delta `$ this gives $`\overline{N}^{abs}O(\beta ^4/|ϵ|^2)`$, which is the same order as the bound, (1), in both $`ϵ`$ and $`\beta `$.

Thus we can use simple counting of absorbed photons to achieve the quantum bound, except when $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ differ only in phase, in which case an interferometric procedure yields a mean number of absorbed photons of the same order as the bound (1). We now turn to the proof of inequality (1).

## IV Bounds for Minimal Absorption Measurements

Absorption-free measurement schemes use a single photon and a choice of paths for that photon: through the arm of the interferometer where the object is located, or through the other ‘ancillary’ arm. However, these protocols are not the most general ones. Indeed, if a single photon is absorbed the protocols stop. But since we are not considering absorption-free measurements but rather minimal absorption schemes we should allow for the possibility that some of the photons may be absorbed while the remaining photons are still available for further operations. We can then imagine protocols where we send a superposition of states with different photon numbers through the object, and possibly perform collective measurements on these photons. Or we can use ancillas which do not interact with the object to create entangled state such as $`|\text{2 photons not passing through the object}|\text{0 photons passing through the object}+|\text{0 photons not passing through the object}|\text{2 photons passing through the object}`$, and all sorts of combinations of this kind.

In order to give a bound on the efficiency of these quantum protocols, we must give a completely general formulation of such protocols. To this end, we divide the total Hilbert space into the product of three subspaces $`H_AH_PH_O`$. The first subspace, $`H_A`$, defines the state of the ancilla. It can be arbitrary; for instance it can be a subspace of the Fock space of the electromagnetic field. The second subspace, $`H_P`$, describes the photons which are sent through the object. A basis of $`H_P`$ is therefore the photon number states $`|n_P`$. The last subspace, $`H_O`$, corresponds to the state of the object. If $`n_1,\mathrm{}n_j,\mathrm{}`$ photons have been absorbed by the object at stages $`1,\mathrm{},j,\mathrm{}`$ of the protocol, the state of the object becomes $`|n_1,\mathrm{},n_j,\mathrm{}_O`$ and represents the state induced in the object by the absorptions. That part of the object Hilbert space that is of interest to us can therefore be written as the tensor product of Fock spaces: $`H_O^1H_O^2\mathrm{}`$, where number states in $`H_O^j`$ count the number of photons that have been absorbed at stage $`j`$. The object can also have internal degrees of freedom, which we do not write explicitly.

We now adopt the general formulation of a protocol used in . It was assumed there that a protocol starts from a specified initial state, after which there is a succession of steps, called ‘interaction steps’, where the photons are sent through the object, alternating with steps where some (arbitrary) unitary transformation occurs. Finally some measurement is made which seeks to determine which object was present. In our general minimal absorption protocol, we assume there is an initial state of the ancilla and photons, $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0_{AP}`$, with the object in state $`|0_1,0_2,\mathrm{}__O`$ since no interaction has yet taken place. The unitary transformation following the $`j`$-th interaction step is of the form $`U_{AP}^jI_O`$.

In  the interaction step is assumed to consist of two parts: a unitary transformation which describes the initial interaction between photon and object, and a measurement which describes the subsequent collapse of the photon/object system into ‘interacted’ or ‘non-interacted’ outcomes (the object is assumed to be macroscopic). Here we assume that each interaction step consists only of a unitary transformation, and we do not carry out the collapse step. If we were to trace over the object space $`H_O`$ at the end of the protocol, before the final measurement, this would be equivalent to the complete interaction step in . Instead, however, we assume for mathematical simplicity that the final measurement is completely arbitrary and can also act on the state of the object. This can only increase the information gain and hence the efficiency of the protocol. For this reason the bound given by inequality (1) is probably not optimal.

We assume the interaction step takes the form of a unitary transformation $`I_AU_{PO}^{int}`$, where $`I_A`$ is the identity on the ancilla Hilbert space. The action of $`U_{PO}^{int}`$ is given by

$$a__P^{}\alpha a__P^{}+\beta b_{j_O}^{},$$
(4)
where $`a__P^{}`$ and $`b_{j_O}^{}`$ are the creation operators in $`H_P`$ and $`H_O^j`$, respectively. The evolution that this induces on the state $`|a__A|1__P|0_j__O=a__P^{}|a__A|0__P|0_j__O`$, which represents a single photon sent through the object (and an ancilla), is

$`|a__A|1__P|0_j__O\alpha |a__A|1__P|0_j__O+\beta |a__A|0__P|1_j__O.`$

If $`l`$ photons are sent through the object, the unitary evolution (4) gives

$$\begin{array}{ccc}|a__A|l__P|0_j__O=\frac{(a__P^{})^l}{\sqrt{l!}}|a__A|0__P|0_j__O\hfill & & \frac{(\alpha a__P^{}+\beta b_{j_O}^{})^l}{\sqrt{l!}}|a__A|0__P|0_j__O\hfill \\ & & =_{m=0}^l(\begin{array}{c}l\\ m\end{array})^{1/2}\alpha ^m\beta ^{lm}|a__A|m__P|(lm)_j__O\hfill \\ & & =|a__A|\stackrel{~}{l}_j_{_{PO}}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
In the last line we have introduced the notation

$$|\stackrel{~}{l}_j_{_{PO}}=\underset{m=0}{\overset{l}{}}(\begin{array}{c}l\\ m\end{array})^{1/2}\alpha ^m\beta ^{lm}|m__P|(lm)_j__O$$
(6)
that will serve us later.

We use the following notation for the state function, given transparency $`i`$, during successive stages of the protocol:

$`\mathrm{}|\mathrm{\Psi }_j^i\text{Interaction Step}_j|\mathrm{\Phi }_j^i\text{Unitary}_j|\mathrm{\Psi }_{j+1}^i\text{Interaction Step}_{j+1}|\mathrm{\Phi }_{j+1}^i\mathrm{}\text{etc.}`$

With this notation, we can explicitly write the state immediately before the $`j`$-th interaction step as

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }_j^i_{_{APO}}={\displaystyle \underset{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_{j1}}{}}C_{kln_1,\mathrm{}n_{j1}}^{j,i}|k__A|l__P|n_1,\mathrm{}n_{j1},0_j,0_{j+1},\mathrm{}__O`$ (7)
where $`\{|k__A,k=0\mathrm{}S\}`$ is a basis in $`H_A`$ and $`\{|l__P\}`$ are the Fock states in $`H_P`$.

Immediately after the interaction step, $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_j^i_{_{APO}}`$ becomes

$`|\mathrm{\Phi }_j^i_{_{APO}}`$ $`=`$ $`I_AU_{PO}^{int}|\mathrm{\Psi }_j^i_{_{APO}}`$ (8)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_{j1}}{}}C_{kln_1,\mathrm{}n_{j1}}^{j,i}|k__A|\stackrel{~}{l}_j^i_{_{PO}}|n_1,\mathrm{}n_{j1},0_{j+1},\mathrm{}`$ (9)
where we have used the notation of (6).

After this interaction step, the unitary transformation $`U_{AP}I_O`$ transforms $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_j^i_{_{APO}}`$to $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{j+1}^i_{_{APO}}`$. Following , we define

$`f_j=|\mathrm{\Psi }_j^1|\mathrm{\Psi }_j^2|.`$

The overlap $`f_j`$ plays an important part in our argument. It measures how much the two states corresponding to evolution with the two transparencies $`i=1,2`$ differ, and thus how easily one can distinguish them. The smaller this quantity, the more efficient the protocol.

Unitarity implies that

$`f_{j+1}=|\mathrm{\Phi }_j^1|\mathrm{\Phi }_j^2|,`$

which, using the normalization conditions

$`\begin{array}{c}{}_{_A}{}^{}k|k^{^{}}_{_A}^{}=\delta _{kk^{^{}}}\hfill \\ {}_{_O}{}^{}n_1\mathrm{}n_{j1}|n_1^{^{}}\mathrm{}n_{j1}^{^{}}_{_O}^{}=\delta _{n_1n_1^{^{}}}\mathrm{}\delta _{n_{j1}n_{j1}^{^{}}},\hfill \end{array}`$

can be written as

$$f_{j+1}=|\underset{k,l,l^{^{}},n_1,\mathrm{}n_{j1}}{}(\overline{C}_l^{j,1}C_l^{^{}}^{j,2})_{kn_1\mathrm{}n_{j1}}{}_{_{PO}}{}^{}\stackrel{~}{l}_j^1|\stackrel{~}{l}_j^{}_{}{}^{}2_{_{PO}}^{}|.$$
(10)
Using (6), we can compute $`{}_{_{PO}}{}^{}\stackrel{~}{l}_j^1|\stackrel{~}{l}_j^2_{_{PO}}^{}`$:

$`{}_{_{PO}}{}^{}\stackrel{~}{l}_j^1|\stackrel{~}{l}_j^2_{_{PO}}^{}=\delta _{ll^{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{l}{}}}(\begin{array}{c}l\\ m\end{array})(\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2)^m(\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2)^{lm}=\delta _{ll^{}}(\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2)^l.`$

We can then rewrite (10) as

$$f_{j+1}=|\underset{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}{}(\overline{C}^{j,1}C^{j,2})_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}(\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2)^l|.$$
(11)
We now obtain an approximation for the term $`\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2`$. The assumption we are making that the final measurement can act on the state of the object is physically incorrect. We should be tracing over the Hilbert space of the object before the final measurement, in which case the phases of the absorption amplitudes $`\beta _i`$ would be irrelevant. We are therefore free to choose the phases of the $`\beta _i`$ as we wish, so as to obtain the best bound. Suppose therefore that

$`\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2=e^{i\varphi }\sqrt{1\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _1}\sqrt{1\overline{\alpha }_2\alpha _2},`$

where $`\varphi `$ is real but otherwise can be chosen freely. By adjusting $`\varphi `$ appropriately, with the assumption $`|ϵ|\beta ^2`$, we can make $`\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2`$ real. Indeed, we can rewrite $`\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2`$ as $`e^{i(\rho _1\rho _2)}\mathrm{cos}\theta _1\mathrm{cos}\theta _2+e^{i\varphi }\mathrm{sin}\theta _1\mathrm{sin}\theta _2`$, where $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _i=|\alpha _i|`$ and where $`\rho _i`$ is the phase of $`\alpha _i`$. The imaginary terms vanish if $`\mathrm{sin}\varphi =\mathrm{cos}\theta _1\mathrm{cos}\theta _2\mathrm{sin}(\rho _2\rho _1)/(\mathrm{sin}\theta _1\mathrm{sin}\theta _2)`$. This is possible only if the right hand side is $`1`$, which is ensured if $`|ϵ|<\frac{\beta ^2}{2|\alpha |}`$.

With this choice of $`\varphi `$, we find

$$\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2=1\frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^2}+O(ϵ^4)$$
(12)
Introducing the notation

$`(\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2)^l=1\delta _l,`$

eq (12) implies that

$`\delta _ll\left({\displaystyle \frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^2}}+O(ϵ^4)\right)`$

since $`(1x)^l1lx`$, for $`0x1`$ (as can easily be verified by induction on $`l`$).

Turning back to eq (11) we are now able to compute $`f_{j+1}`$:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill f_{j+1}& =|_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}(\overline{C}^{j,1}C^{j,2})_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}(\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2+\overline{\beta }_1\beta _2)^l|\hfill \\ & =|_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}(\overline{C}^{j,1}C^{j,2})_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}(1\delta _l)|\hfill \\ & |_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}(\overline{C}^{j,1}C^{j,2})_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}||_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}(\overline{C}^{j,1}C^{j,2})_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}\delta _l|\hfill \\ & f_j_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}|(\overline{C}^{j,1}C^{j,2})_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}\delta _l|\hfill \\ & =f_j(\frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^2}+O(ϵ^4))_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}|(\overline{C}^{j,1}C^{j,2})_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}|l\hfill \\ & f_j(\frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^2}+O(ϵ^4))_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}\frac{|C_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}^{j,1}|^2+|C_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}^{j,2}|^2}{2}l\hfill \\ & =f_j(\frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^2}+O(ϵ^4))(n_j^1+n_j^2)/2\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
In the last equality, $`n_j^i=_{k,l,n_1,\mathrm{}n_j}|C^{j,i}|_{kln_1\mathrm{}n_j}^2l`$ is the average number of photons sent through the object at interaction step $`j`$. Starting from $`f_1=1,`$ and iterating the formula above, we conclude that

$$f_K1(\frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^2}+O(ϵ^4))\underset{j=1}{\overset{K1}{}}\frac{n_j^1+n_j^2}{2}=1(\frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^2}+O(ϵ^4))\frac{N^1+N^2}{2},$$
(14)
$`N^i`$ being the total number of photons that are sent through object $`i`$ in the protocol. The average number of photons absorbed by object $`i`$ is $`\overline{N}_i^{abs}=|\beta _i|^2N^i`$, so that

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{N}_1^{abs}+\overline{N}_2^{abs}}{2}}={\displaystyle \frac{|\beta _1|^2N^1+|\beta _2|^2N^2}{2}}\beta ^2{\displaystyle \frac{N^1+N^2}{2}}`$

where the last approximation is valid if $`|ϵ|\frac{\beta ^2}{2|\alpha |}`$. From (14), we thus find that

$$\frac{\overline{N}_1^{abs}+\overline{N}_2^{abs}}{2}\frac{\beta ^4}{2|ϵ|^2}(1f_K)+O(ϵ^0).$$
(15)
By choosing measurement axes symmetrical with respect to the final state vectors $`\mathrm{\Psi }_K^1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_K^2`$, one obtains the minimal probability of mis-identification of the object, $`P_E=\frac{1}{2}(1\sqrt{1f_K^2})`$, which implies $`f_K=2\sqrt{P_E(1P_E)}`$ . Putting everything together gives our bound (1).

## V Discriminating faint images

We now consider the more general situation where we have $`M`$ pixels, and $`L`$ images, i.e. assignments of transparencies to these pixels. The transparencies at any one pixel for all the different images are assumed to be close. We obtain a bound on the mean number of absorbed photons that is similar to inequality (1), with $`ϵ`$ replaced by the maximum difference between the transparencies of individual pixels. Because this bound does not decrease with the number of pixels, it is not obvious that collective addressing of the pixels offers a significant advantage over addressing each pixel individually. Nevertheless we shall give in the next section an example where such collective addressing significantly decreases the mean number of absorbed photons.

The state at stage $`j`$ when there are $`M`$ pixels and $`L`$ images can be written as

$`|\psi _j^p_{APO}={\displaystyle C_{k,l_1,\mathrm{},l_M;n_{11},n_{12},\mathrm{},n_{1M},n_{21},\mathrm{},n_{j1M}}^{j,p}|k_A|l_1\mathrm{}|l_M|n_{11},\mathrm{}},`$

where $`p`$, $`1pL`$ specifies the image, $`\{|k__A,k=0\mathrm{}S\}`$ is a base in $`H_A`$, $`l_i`$ is the number of photons sent through pixel $`i`$ and $`n_{ab}`$ is the number of photons absorbed at stage $`a`$ by pixel $`b`$. We can write the coefficient concisely as $`C_{k,𝐥,𝐧}^{j,p}`$.

If $`f_j^{p,q}`$ denotes the absolute value of the overlap between states with image $`p`$ and $`q`$ at stage $`j`$, the analogue of eq. (11) is

$`f_{j+1}^{p,q}=\left|\psi _{j+1}^p|\psi _{j+1}^q\right|=\left|{\displaystyle \underset{k,𝐥,𝐧}{}}\left(\overline{C}^{j,p}C^{j,q}\right)_{k,𝐥,𝐧}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}}(\overline{\alpha }_i^p\alpha _i^q+\overline{\beta }_i^p\beta _i^q)^{l_i}\right|,`$

where $`\alpha _i^p`$ is the amplitude for absorbing a photon at pixel $`i`$ given image $`p`$. Assuming that $`ϵ_i^{p,q}=(\alpha _i^p\alpha _i^q)/2`$ is small, for any $`i`$ and $`p`$, $`q`$, we can write this approximately as

$`f_{j+1}^{p,q}\left|{\displaystyle \left(\overline{C}^{j,p}C^{j,q}\right)_{k,𝐥,𝐧}(1\underset{i}{}\delta _{l_i}^i)}\right|,`$

where $`\delta _l^il(2|ϵ_i^{p,q}|^2/\beta _i^2+O((ϵ_i^{p,q})^4))`$, and $`\beta _i`$ is the average of $`|\beta _i^p|`$ over all images $`p`$. Leaving out the $`O(ϵ^4)`$ terms, the steps leading to eq. (13) and (14) then yield

$`{\displaystyle \underset{k,𝐥,𝐧}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{|C_{k,𝐥,𝐧}^{j,p}|^2+|C_{k,𝐥,𝐧}^{j,q}|^2}{2}}l_i{\displaystyle \frac{2|ϵ_i^{p,q}|^2}{\beta _i^2}}1f_K^{p,q}.`$

or

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}(N_i^p+N_i^q)\frac{|ϵ_i^{p,q}|^2}{\beta _i^2}1f_K^{p,q},$$
(16)
where $`N_i^p`$ is the number of photons passing through pixel $`i`$ under assignment $`p`$. Now consider the special situation (which will arise in the next section) where the $`\alpha _i^p`$ are close in value for all $`i`$ and $`p`$, i.e. over all pixels and all images. Let $`\beta `$ be the average of all the $`|\beta _i^p|`$s, and let $`|ϵ^{p,q}|=\mathrm{max}_i\{|ϵ_i^{p,q}|\}`$a. Then we have the corollary to (16)

$$\overline{N}_p^{abs}+\overline{N}_q^{abs}\frac{\beta ^4(1f_K^{p,q})}{|ϵ^{p,q}|^2}$$
(17)
where $`\overline{N}_p^{abs}`$ is the mean number of photons absorbed if the image is $`p`$. In the case where we wish to discriminate between two images, $`p`$ and $`q`$, we obtain the analogue of inequality (1):

$$\frac{\overline{N}_p^{abs}+\overline{N}_q^{abs}}{2}\frac{\beta ^4(12\sqrt{P_E(1P_E)})}{2|ϵ^{p,q}|^2},$$
(18)
where $`P_E`$ is the probability of mistaking image $`p`$ for the image $`q`$. If the task is to distinguish one image from all $`L1`$ others, then averaging over all $`pq`$ gives

$$\widehat{N}^{abs}\frac{\beta ^4(12\sqrt{P_E(1P_E)})}{2|ϵ|^2},$$
(19)
where $`|ϵ|=\mathrm{max}_{p,q}\{|ϵ^{p,q}|\}`$, $`P_E`$ now denotes the maximum probability of confusing any two images, and $`\widehat{N}^{abs}`$ is the mean absorption $`\overline{N}_p^{abs}`$ averaged over all images $`p`$.

## VI Logarithmic gain in the number of absorbed photons

The bound (18) is simply the single-pixel bound (1) applied to the pixel $`i`$ for which the difference of transparencies $`|ϵ_i^{p,q}|=|\alpha _i^p\alpha _i^q|/2`$ is largest. This bound does not depend on the number of pixels in the image. Nevertheless we shall show that it is possible to decrease the number of absorbed photons by addressing all the pixels collectively, as compared to addressing them one by one.

Wim van Dam  considered the following problem: Given a Hadamard matrix $`H`$, an oracle evaluates the function $`f(i)=H_{pi}`$, where $`H_{pi}`$ is the $`i`$-th element of the $`p`$-th row of $`H`$, for some specified $`p`$. One wishes to know the smallest number of calls to the oracle needed to determine $`p`$. We consider an analogous problem here. Suppose $`\alpha _i^p=\alpha +ϵH_{pi}`$, for small $`ϵ`$. The task is to determine $`p`$ with a minimum number of photons absorbed. We can think of the $`ϵH_{pi}`$ term as defining a faint image against the background of $`\alpha `$. This is an ‘epsilon’ version of van Dam’s problem, with a passage of a photon through the pixels playing the role of a call to an oracle. We assume that $`\alpha `$ and $`ϵ`$ are real.

Suppose the Hadamard matrix is un-normalized, so the entries are $`\pm 1`$, and that the top row of $`H`$ is all $`+1`$s. Given two rows, $`p`$ and $`q`$, $`pq`$, $`ϵ_i^{p,q}=0`$ at the pixels $`i`$ where the rows $`p`$ and $`q`$ agree, and $`ϵ_i^{p,q}=ϵ`$ otherwise. Thus inequality (19) implies

$`\widehat{N}^{abs}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^4(1f)}{2ϵ^2}},`$

and $`\widehat{N}^{abs}`$ is $`O(1/ϵ^2)`$.

Following , one can achieve this bound with the following simple quantum algorithm. Assume $`p1`$. Prepare the one photon state $`|\psi =\frac{1}{\sqrt{M}}|i`$. After the photon passes through the pixels once, there is a probability $`\alpha ^2+ϵ^2`$ of the photon not being absorbed, in which case $`|\psi =(\alpha +ϵH_{pi})|i/\sqrt{M(\alpha ^2+ϵ^2)}`$. Applying the unitary operator $`H/\sqrt{M}`$ to this gives $`(\alpha |1+ϵ|p)/\sqrt{\alpha ^2+ϵ^2}`$, and $`|p`$ can be detected with $`O(1/ϵ^2)`$ independent repeats of the process. Thus we get the same order as our bound.

Let us now suppose that we address each pixel individually. Specifically we shall suppose that we send photons one by one through the pixels and measure whether they are absorbed or not. The following informal argument gives a bound on the value for $`\overline{N}^{abs}`$ for such an individual-pixel protocol. Let $`A=\{p_A,p_N\}`$ be the distribution with probability $`p_A`$ of absorption and $`p_N`$ of non-absorption at pixel $`i`$. Let $`R=\{p_1,\mathrm{},p_M\}`$ be the distribution of probabilities of the Hadamard rows. The mutual information $`I(A:R)=H(A)+H(R)H(A,R)`$ tells us how much on average we learn (in bits) on being told whether a photon is absorbed at pixel $`i`$ or not.

Given prior probabilities $`\pi _p`$ for row $`p`$, $`H(R)=_p\pi _p\mathrm{log}\pi _p`$. The term $`H(A,R)`$ is given by

$`H(A,R)={\displaystyle \underset{p}{}}\{P(A,p)\mathrm{log}P(A,p)+P(N,p)\mathrm{log}P(N,p)\},`$

where $`P(X,p)`$ is the joint probability of row $`p`$ being chosen and the photon being absorbed ($`X=A`$) or not ($`X=N`$). Since $`P(A|p)=(\alpha +H_{pi}ϵ)^2`$, we have $`P(A,p)=P(A|p)P(p)=(\alpha +H_{pi}ϵ)^2\pi _p`$. Similarly, $`P(N,p)=\{1(\alpha +H_{pi}ϵ)^2\}\pi _p`$. Finally, $`H(A)=p_A\mathrm{log}p_Ap_N\mathrm{log}p_N`$, where $`p_X=_pP(X,p)`$, for $`X=A,N`$. Up to second order in $`ϵ`$ one finds

$`I(A:R){\displaystyle \frac{2ϵ^2}{\beta ^2\mathrm{log}2}}\{{\displaystyle \underset{p}{}}\pi _pH_{pi}^2({\displaystyle \underset{p}{}}\pi _pH_{pi})^2\}{\displaystyle \frac{2ϵ^2}{\beta ^2\mathrm{log}2}}.`$

As $`\mathrm{log}_2M`$ bits are needed to distinguish one row from $`M`$ others, and each photon yields at most $`4ϵ^2/(\beta ^2\mathrm{log}2)`$ bits, we need at least $`N`$ photons, where $`4Nϵ^2/(\beta ^2\mathrm{log}2)\mathrm{log}_2M`$, or $`N\beta ^2\mathrm{log}M/(4ϵ^2)`$. Thus $`N^{abs}\beta ^4\mathrm{log}M/(4ϵ^2)`$. The $`\mathrm{log}M`$ factor here is the counterpart of the $`\mathrm{log}n`$ classical bound given in , Lemma 5.

A value of $`N^{abs}`$ of this order can be attained by an algorithm in which the same number $`N/M`$ of photons is sent through each pixel. Denoting by $`n_i`$ the number of photons transmitted at pixel $`i`$, the algorithm seeks the value of $`q`$ which maximizes the sum $`S_q=_iH_{qi}n_i`$ if $`q`$ top row, $`S_q=_iH_{qi}n_iN\alpha ^2`$ if $`q=`$ top row. It is easy to check that the distributions for $`S_q`$ have standard deviation $`\alpha \beta \sqrt{N}`$ and the difference of the means for $`p`$ and $`qp`$ is $`2N\alpha ϵ`$. To distinguish one distribution from amongst $`M`$ we therefore need $`\alpha \beta \sqrt{N\mathrm{log}M}=2N\alpha ϵ`$, implying $`\overline{N}_{abs}=O(\mathrm{log}M/ϵ^2)`$. Thus the collective and individual-pixel bounds can both be attained, and there is a collective gain of a factor of $`\mathrm{log}M`$.

## VII Beating the bounds: limitations of our results.

We now give some examples where it is possible to make large gains over simple counting of absorbed photons. These examples may seem to violate our main inequality (1), but we explain why this is not so.

Consider first absorption-free measurement . Given a completely absorbing and a completely transparent object, this offers the possibility of discrimination without any photons being absorbed (with probability approaching one ). Of course, our inequality (1) does not apply here, since the transparencies being compared are not close in value. However, in the case where $`\alpha _1=1`$, and $`\alpha _2`$ takes some value not equal to $`\alpha _1`$, essentially absorption-free discrimination is always possible . Suppose we choose $`\alpha _2=12ϵ`$ for small $`ϵ`$. Then $`\beta \sqrt{2ϵ}`$, and, carrying through the calculations leading to (1), one finds $`N^{abs}(12\sqrt{P_E(1P_E)})(1ϵ)`$. Since the absorption-free measurement gives an arbitrarily small $`N^{abs}`$ with $`P_E=0`$, we seem to have a violation of our inequality. However, there is in fact no contradiction, since the condition $`|ϵ|\frac{\beta ^2}{2|\alpha |}`$ is not satisfied, and this is used in the proof of (1).

It is interesting to note that the inequality in  for the probability of absorption-free discrimination yields the same order dependence as (1) in the range where they may legitimately be compared. In fact, if one asks how many photons would be absorbed by repeating an absorption-free protocol until it succeeds, one can express this in terms of the probability $`P(abs|i)`$ of a photon being absorbed during the protocol. One sums over repeated runs with absorptions until no absorption occurs, when the object will be reliably identified. Thus

$$\overline{N}_i^{abs}=\underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}k(1P(abs|i))P(abs|i)^k=\frac{P(abs|i)}{(1P(abs|i))}$$
(20)
We know from  that $`P(abs|1)P(abs|2)\eta ^2`$ where $`\eta =\frac{|\beta _1\beta _2|}{|(1\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2)|}`$. With the same assumption as in our proof of (1), i.e. $`|ϵ|\frac{\beta ^2}{2|\alpha |}`$, we find $`\frac{|\beta _1\beta _2|}{|(1\overline{\alpha }_1\alpha _2)|}1\frac{2|ϵ|^2}{\beta ^4}`$. There is thus necessarily a value of $`i`$ so that $`P(abs|i)\eta `$. This implies that for that value of $`i`$ we have

$$\overline{N}_i^{abs}\frac{\eta }{1\eta }\frac{\beta ^4}{2|ϵ^2|},$$
(21)
with the same dependence on $`\beta `$ and $`ϵ`$ as our bound (1).

We turn now to another example, where collective measurement of many pixels apparently enables our bound to be beaten. This example is inspired by Grover’s search algorithm. Recall that the oracle in Grover’s algorithm carries out the transformation $`|x|y|x|yf(x)`$ where $`x=1,\mathrm{},M`$ is the position, $`y=0,1`$ and $`f(x)=0`$ except if $`x=x_0`$ in which case $`f(x_0)=1`$. This transformation can be mapped into the alternative equivalent form $`|x(1)^{f(x)}|x`$. It is this second form we shall use below. The aim in Grover’s problem is to find $`x_0`$ by addressing the oracle as few times as possible. A classical search algorithm would need the oracle to be addressed $`O(M)`$ times, whereas Grover’s algorithm requires only $`O(\sqrt{M})`$ calls of the oracle.

Consider an object composed of M pixels. As a first stage suppose that each pixel is completely transparent, but that a single pixel $`x_0`$ induces a phase of $`1`$, whereas all the other pixels induce a phase of $`+1`$. We are then exactly in the situation of Grover’s algorithm, and can determine which pixel induces the anomalous phase in $`\sqrt{M}`$ passages through the object.

Now suppose that the object has a very small probability $`\beta ^21`$ of absorbing a photon each time it passes through a pixel. Then the probability that Grover’s algorithm succeeds is $`|\alpha |^{2\sqrt{M}}\mathrm{exp}(\beta ^2\sqrt{M})`$. On the other hand the probability that an algorithm that addresses each pixel individually succeeds without absorbing a single photon is $`|\alpha |^{2M}\mathrm{exp}(\beta ^2M)`$. Thus if $`\beta ^2M\beta ^4`$, one can find the anomalous pixel using Grover’s algorithm with vanishing probability that a photon is absorbed, whereas addressing each pixel individually would entail a large number of absorbed photons. Note that if the number $`M`$ of pixels is larger than $`\beta ^4`$, then Grover’s algorithm will no longer work because the photon will be absorbed before completion of the algorithm.

We now create an “epsilon” version of this problem by supposing that the anomalous pixel $`x_0`$ induces a phase $`e^{iϵ}`$ relative to all the other pixels. In this case we can either replace the call to the oracle in Grover’s algorithm by $`n`$ successive passages of the photon through the pixels, with $`nϵ=\pi `$; or we can use Fahri and Gutmann’s continuous version of Grover’s algorithm. In either case the total number of times the photon must pass through the object is $`N\sqrt{M}/ϵ`$. The probability that the photon is absorbed is therefore $`P_{abs}\beta ^2\sqrt{M}/ϵ`$. Just as with the limiting case, $`\alpha _1=1`$, $`\alpha _2=12ϵ`$, of absorption-free measurement, a violation of (1) seems at first sight possible. However, this is only attainable by having $`P_{abs}`$ small, which means that $`\beta ^2ϵ`$, so again the conditions for our inequality are not satisfied.

Qualitatively, the advantage of taking the object to be extremely transparent is that quantum coherence can be maintained over many passages of a photon through the object. This is illustrated not only by the examples above, but also by the interferometric example at the end of section III, where, in the limit of extreme transparency, it is advantageous to use a protocol in which the photon passes many times through the object. The latter situation gave absorptions consistent with our inequality (1), whereas in the examples considered in this section $`\beta `$ and $`ϵ`$ are of equal (small) magnitude, so the inequality does not apply. It would be interesting to find bounds which hold when both $`\beta `$ and $`ϵ`$ tend to zero.

## VIII Conclusion

The possibility of absorption-free measurements  suggests that one might be able to use the quantum character of light to significantly improve the imaging of photosensitive objects, where one wants to minimize the number of absorbed photons. However, as we have just seen in the preceding section, discrimination of close values of transparency by repeated trials of absorption-free measurement leads to a bound on the number of absorbed photons compatible with (1).

The conditions under which we have derived (1) are more general than this, since absorption-free measurement uses one photon at a time, whereas we allow protocols with arbitrary numbers of photons. Our result imposes an inescapable bound of order $`1/|ϵ|^2`$ on the mean number of absorbed photons. In most cases this bound can be attained by simply sending a certain number of photons through the object and counting the number of transmitted photons. When $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ differ only in phase, an interferometric set-up in which each photon can either pass through through the object or take an alternative route also gives rise to a mean number of absorbed photons of order $`1/|ϵ|^2`$. However when the probability that the object absorbs a photon tends to zero, it is advantageous to use a modified protocol in which the photon passes through the object many times.

Let us note parenthetically that using classical light as a source is in general disadvantageous, particularly in the limit where the object is very transparent. This seems to be because the photon number is ill-defined for classical light, and this extra noise implies that more photons must be sent through the object compared to a source with well-defined photon number.

Of course, the problem of discriminating two close transparencies is a specialized one. A more realistic problem would be that of putting narrow limits on a transparency that can take a continuous range of values. However, any quantum protocol that achieves the latter goal must select from a number of measurement outcomes, and must therefore be able to discriminate between pairs of outcomes for close transparencies. Our $`1/|ϵ|^2`$ bound therefore applies to such protocols, with $`ϵ`$ now being the standard deviation of the estimated transparency. In general, counting the number of absorbed photons will require of order $`1/|ϵ|^2`$ photons to limit the estimated transparency within a standard deviation of $`ϵ`$. Only in the case where the objects have the same probability of absorbing a photon, but differ in the phase they induce, is an interferometric protocol necessary.

Despite these rather negative conclusions for the single pixel case, interferometric protocols can offer a significant advantage when the task is to discriminate patterns of many pixels, and where all the pixels are addressed collectively rather than individually. The example of discrimination between a set of orthogonal patterns (added to a constant background) shows that a $`\mathrm{log}M`$ gain is possible for $`M`$ pixels, and Kent and Wallace have shown a gain of the same order in the detection of defective pixels . We have also considered some special cases of absorption-free measurement and searches with Grover’s algorithm which do not meet the background assumptions of our inequality (1) and are thereby able to exceed the bounds it imposes. Finding further algorithms that can answer questions about pixel arrays with low absorption cost seems an interesting area for further exploration.

## IX Aknowledgements

We thank Adrian Kent for helpful conversations and for drawing our attention to the possibility of a logarithmic gain of quantum multi-pixel algorithms compared to classical ones. We acknowledge financial support by the European Science Foundation. S.M. is a research associate of the Belgian National Research Fund, he acknowledges funding by the European Union under project EQUIP (IST-FET program).