Breaking Rayleigh’s curse for two unbalanced single-photon emitters: Beam modulation and examination of shot statistics

Rayleigh’s criterion states that resolving point sources below the width of the point spread function is impossible, with the error increasing at shorter distances. This is known as Rayleigh’s curse. While detection mode shaping solves this for equal sources, it fails for unbalanced sources with unknown brightness ratios. We propose BLESS, a technique using Beam moduLation and Examination of Shot Statistics, breaking Rayleigh’s curse for unbalanced sources. Classical and quantum Cramér-Rao bound calculations show the strong potential of BLESS for real imaging experiments.