Of the approximately 4500 known extrasolar planets, only about 1% were found by imaging the planets directly. The reason for the low direct-detection rate is that the dim light scattered from an exoplanet is hard to recognize amid the glare of the planet’s parent star. Now, Zixin Huang at Macquarie University, Australia, and Cosmo Lupo at the University of Sheffield, UK, predict that quantum imaging could significantly improve the probability of directly detecting an exoplanet [1]. They also show that the ultimate sensitivity limit for this task is already reachable for two currently available techniques—one based on interferometry, the other on the decomposition of light from the image from a star into different spatial modes (see Viewpoint: Unlocking the Hidden Information in Starlight).
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