title: Practical Receiver for Optimal Discrimination of Binary Coherent Signals.
abstract: We address the long-standing problem of discriminating coherent states with the minimum error rate. We show an optimum receiver for coherent states which admits a relatively simple implementation with current technologies. The receiver is based on multichannel splitting of the signal, followed by feed-forward signal displacement and photon-counting detection. We develop an optimal control strategy for a finite signal split and show convergence of the error rate to the Helstrom bound.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Günther-Scharowsky-Straße 1/Bau 24, 91058 Erlangen, Germany.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sych
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Günther-Scharowsky-Straße 1/Bau 24, 91058 Erlangen, Germany.|University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Staudtstraße 7/B2, 91058 Erlangen, Germany.
authors.forename: Gerd
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Leuchs