Abstract

The development of high efficiency single photon counting and timing has revolutionised cytometry and imaging with a wide variety of techniques used to identify fluorescent labels and their environs by colour and lifetime. Inherently these measurements reach the shot noise limit implicit in photon counting of classical light. In this talk I will review recent advances using quantum light which could help in biology and pharmaceutical development. One focus of recent work is to develop and exploit ‘quiet’ light to demonstrate measurement below the shot noise limit for discrimination in light sensitive samples. Another is the exploitation of entangled photon pair light at long wavelength but detected at short wavelengths where photon counting detectors prevail. A third is the development of integrated optics where arrays of optical sensors can be deployed each sensing at the quantum limit. A final topic is the developments of quantum simulators where molecular simulations have been demonstrated at the small molecule level (egH2O, NH3) but could in future outperform classical computational methods for the simulation of biologically relevant molecules and reactions.