Hybrid near-optimum binary receiver with realistic photon-number-resolving detectors

Understand

We propose a near-optimum receiver for the discrimination of binary phase-shift-keyed coherent states employing photon-number-resolving detectors.

• The receiver exploits a discrimination strategy based on both the so-called homodyne-like and the direct detection, thus resulting in a hybrid scheme.
• We analyse the performance and the robustness of the proposed scheme under realistic conditions, namely, in the presence of inefficient detection and dark counts.
• We show that the present hybrid setup is near-optimum and beats both the standard-quantum-limit and the performance of the Kennedy receiver.