Bright background light can do more than clutter a quantum experiment. It can wash out the very features that make quantum systems useful in the first place. That is the problem a team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, or INRS, set out to tackle. Working with light particles called photons, the researchers built a way to sift out meaningful quantum signals even when those signals are buried under heavy optical noise. Their results, published in Science Advances, point to a simpler and more energy-efficient route for keeping quantum information intact in messy, real-world conditions. The work came from the group of Professor José Azaña, in collaboration with Professor Roberto Morandotti’s team. It was carried out by Benjamin Crockett during his PhD at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre. Crockett has since moved to the University of British Columbia as a Banting postdoctoral fellow. Quantum technologies depend on detecting the properties carried by single photons. That sounds manageable in a carefully controlled lab. It becomes much harder when the photon you care …