We experimentally demonstrate pseudothermal ghost imaging and ghost diffraction using only a single single-pixel detector. We achieve this by replacing the high resolution detector of the reference beam with a computation of the propagating field, following a recent proposal by Shapiro [J. H. Shapiro, arXiv:0807.2614 (2008)]. Since only a single detector is used, this provides an experimental evidence that pseudothermal ghost imaging does not rely on non-local quantum correlations. In addition, we show the depth-resolving capability of this ghost imaging technique.
Ghost imaging with thermal fermions is calculated based on two-particle interference in Feynman's path integral theory. It is found that ghost imaging with thermal fermions can be simulated by ghost imaging with thermal bosons and classical particles. Photons in pseudothermal light are employed to experimentally study fermionic ghost imaging. Ghost imaging with thermal bosons and fermions is discussed based on the point-to-point (spot) correlation between the object and image planes. The employed method offers an efficient guidance for future ghost imaging with real thermal fermions, which may…
In this paper it is shown that the key to understanding the ghost imaging mystery are the crossing symmetric photon reactions in the nonlinear media. Then, an intuitive mechanism for the description of the ghost imaging in terms of the quantum mirror (QM) is presented. Moreover, we prove that the ghost imaging laws depend only on the energy-momentum conservation and not on the photons entanglement.
It is shown that lensless pseudothermal ghost imaging is not immune to spatial resolution loss from the presence of atmospheric turbulence along the propagation paths.
We describe an advanced image reconstruction algorithm for pseudothermal ghost imaging, reducing the number of measurements required for image recovery by an order of magnitude. The algorithm is based on compressed sensing, a technique that enables the reconstruction of an N-pixel image from much less than N measurements. We demonstrate the algorithm using experimental data from a pseudothermal ghost-imaging setup. The algorithm can be applied to data taken from past pseudothermal ghost-imaging experiments, improving the reconstruction's quality.
We present an experimental comparison between different iterative ghost imaging algorithms. Our experimental setup utilizes a spatial light modulator for generating known random light fields to illuminate a partially-transmissive object. We adapt the weighting factor used in the traditional ghost imaging algorithm to account for changes in the efficiency of the generated light field. We show that our normalized weighting algorithm can match the performance of differential ghost imaging.
We use twin photons generated by spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) to perform temporal ghost imaging of a single time signal. The retrieval of a binary signal containing eight bits is performed with an error rate below 1%.
We investigate the effect of turbulence on quantum ghost imaging. We use entangled photons and demonstrate that for a novel experimental configuration the effect of turbulence can be greatly diminished. By decoupling the entangled photon source from the ghost imaging central image plane, we are able to dramatically increase the ghost image quality. When imaging a test pattern through turbulence, this method increased the imaged pattern visibility from V = 0.14 +/- 0.04 to V = 0.29 +/- 0.04.
High visibility temporal ghost imaging with classical light is possible when superbunching pseudothermal light is employed. In the numerical simulation, the visibility of temporal ghost imaging with pseudothermal light equaling ($4.7\pm 0.2$)\% can be increased to ($75\pm 8$)\% in the same scheme with superbunching pseudothermal light. The reasons for the difference in visibility and quality of the retrieved images in different situations are discussed in detail. It is concluded that high visibility and high quality temporal ghost image can be obtained by collecting large enough number of data…
Traditional ghost imaging experiments exploit position correlations between correlated states of light. These correlations occur directly in spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), and in such a scenario, the two-photon state used for ghost imaging is symmetric. Here we perform ghost imaging using an anti-symmetric state, engineering the two-photon state symmetry by means of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. We use both symmetric and anti-symmetric states and show that the ghost imaging setup configuration results in object-image rotations depending on the state selected. Further, the object…
Recently it has been suggested that an enhancement in the visibility of ghost images obtained with thermal light can be achieved exploiting higher order correlations [3]. This paper reports on the status of an higher order ghost imaging experiment carried on at INRIM labs exploiting a pseudo-thermal source and a CCD camera.
Imaging for an occluded object is usually a difficult problem, in this letter, we introduce an imaging scheme based on computational ghost imaging, which can obtain the image of a target object behind an obstacle. According to our theoretical analysis, once the distance between the object and the obstacle is far enough, one can obtain the image of the object by using ghost imaging technique. The wavelength of the light source also affects the quality of the reconstructed image. In addition, if the bucket detector is placed far away from the obstacle, a tiny point-like detector without collecti…
A special algorithm for the Fourier-transform Ghost Imaging (GI) scheme is discussed based on the Compressive Sampling (CS) theory. Though developed mostly in real space, CS algorithm could also be used for the Fourier spectrum reconstruction of pure phase object by setting a proper sensing matrix. This could find its application in diffraction imaging of X-ray, neutron and electron with higher efficiency and resolution. Simulation and experiment results are also presented to prove the feasibility.
For conventional imaging, shaking of the imaging system or the target leads to the degradation of imaging resolution. In this work, the influence of the target's shaking to fourier-transform ghost diffraction (FGD) is investigated. The analytical results, which are backed up by numerical simulation and experiments, demonstrate that the quiver of target has no effect on the resolution of FGD, thus the target's imaging with high spatial resolution can be always achieved by phase-retrieval method from the FGD patterns. This approach can be applied in high-precision imaging systems, to overcome th…
In this Letter we present experimental results concerning the retrieval of images of absorbing objects immersed in turbid media via differential ghost imaging (DGI) in a backscattering configuration. The method has been applied, for the first time to our knowledge, to the imaging of small thin black objects located at different depths inside a turbid solution of polystyrene nanospheres and its performances assessed via comparison with standard imaging techniques. A simple theoretical model capable of describing the basic optics of DGI in turbid media is proposed.
Turbulence-free images cannot be produced by conventional computational ghost imaging because calculated light is not affected by the same atmospheric turbulence as real light. In this article, we first addressed this issue by measuring the photon number fluctuation autocorrelation of the signals generated by a conventional computational ghost imaging device. Our results illustrate how conventional computational ghost imaging without structural changes can be used to produce turbulence-free images.
Experimental data with digital masks and a theoretical analysis are presented for an imaging scheme that we call time-correspondence differential ghost imaging (TCDGI). It is shown that by conditional averaging of the information from the reference detector but with the negative signals inverted, the quality of the reconstructed images is in general superior to all other ghost imaging (GI) methods to date. The advantages of both differential GI and time-correspondence GI are combined, plus less data manipulation and shorter computation time are required to obtain equivalent quality images unde…
In quantum mechanics, entanglement and correlations are not just a mere sporadic curiosity, but rather common phenomena at the basis of an interacting quantum system. In electron microscopy, such concepts have not been extensively explored yet in all their implications; in particular, inelastic scattering can be reanalyzed in terms of correlation between the electron beam and the sample. While classical inelastic scattering simply implies loss of coherence in the electron beam, performing a joint measurement on the electron beam and the sample excitation could restore the coherence and the los…
We show that, when the integration time of the single photon detectors is longer than the correlation time of the biphoton, the attainable spatial resolution in ghost imaging with entangled signal idler pairs generated in type II spontaneous parametric down conversion is limited by the angular spread of single-frequency-signal idler pairs. If, however, the detector integration time is shorter than the biphoton correlation time, the transverse k-vectors of different spectral components combine coherently in the image, improving the spatial resolution.
Ghost imaging is a quantum optics technique that uses correlations between two beams to reconstruct an image in one beam from photons that do not interact with the object being imaged. While pairwise (second order) correlations are usually used to create the image, higher order correlations can be utilized to improve the performance of ghost imaging. In this paper, we demonstrate higher order atomic ghost imaging, using entangled ultracold metastable helium atoms from an s-wave collision halo. We construct higher order ghost images up to 5th order and show that using higher order correlations …
Classical ghost imaging has received considerable attention in recent years because of its remarkable ability to image a scene without direct observation by a light-detecting imaging device. In this article, we show that this imaging process is actually a realization of a paradigm known as dual photography, which has been shown to produce full-color dual (ghost) images of 3D objects with complex materials without using a traditional imaging device. Specifically, we demonstrate mathematically that the cross-correlation based methods used to recover ghost images are equivalent to the light trans…
We develop a new approach in magneto-optical imaging (MOI), applying for the first time a ghost imaging (GI) protocol to perform Faraday microscopy. MOI is of the utmost importance for the investigation of magnetic properties of material samples, through Weiss domains shape, dimension and dynamics analysis. Nevertheless, in some extreme conditions such as e. g. cryogenic temperatures or high magnetic fields application, there exists a lack of domains images due to the difficulty in creating an efficient imaging system in such environments. Here we present an innovative MOI technique that separ…
For ghost imaging, pursuing high resolution images and short acquisition times required for reconstructing images are always two main goals. We report an image reconstruction algorithm called compressive sampling (CS) reconstruction to recover ghost images. By CS reconstruction, ghost imaging with both super-resolution and a good signal-to-noise ratio can be obtained via short acquisition times. Both effect influencing and approaches further improving the resolution of ghost images via CS reconstruction, relationship between ghost imaging and CS theory are also discussed.
Both ghost imaging (GI) and ghost imaging via compressive sampling (GICS) can nonlocally image an object. We report the influence of spatial transverse coherence property of a thermal source on GI and GICS and show that, using the same acquisition numbers, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of images recovered by GI will be reduced while the quality of reconstructed images will be enhanced for GICS as the spatial transverse coherence lengths located on the object plane are decreased. Differences between GI and GICS, methods to further improve the quality and image extraction efficiency of GICS, a…
Correlated-photon imaging, popularly known as ghost imaging, is a technique whereby an image is formed from light that has never interacted with the object. In ghost imaging experiments two correlated light fields are produced. One of these fields illuminates the object, and the other field is measured by a spatially resolving detector. In the quantum regime, these correlated light fields are produced by entangled photons created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. To date, all correlated-photon ghost-imaging experiments have scanned a single-pixel detector through the field of view to …
A recent thermal ghost imaging experiment by Wu's group constructed positive and negative images using a novel algorithm. This algorithm allows to form the images with use of partial measurements from the reference arm, even which never passes through the object, conditioned on the object arm. In this paper, we present a simple theory which explains the experimental observation, and provides an in-depth understanding of conventional ghost imaging. In particular, we theoretically show that the visibility of formed images through such an algorithm is not bounded by the standard value 1/3. In fac…
Fourier analysis of ghost imaging (FAGI) is proposed in this paper to analyze the properties of ghost imaging with thermal light sources. This new theory is compatible with the general correlation theory of intensity fluctuation and could explain some amazed phenomena. Furthermore we design a series of experiments to verify the new theory and investigate the inherent properties of ghost imaging.
The long time consumption is a bottleneck for the applicability of the ghost imaging (GI). By introducing a criterion for the convergence of GI, we investigate a factor that impacts on the convergence speed of it. Based on computer experiments, we demonstrate that the object's feature size relative to the spatial coherent length of the illuminating light impacts on the necessary number of uncorrelated data being acquired for the correlation computation. It may motivate people to seek ways towards real-time practical applications of GI and its analogues. In addition, the method to simulate the …
Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Atominstitut, TU Wien（维也纳量子科学中心，原子研究所，维也纳工业大学）；University Service Centre for Transmission Electron Microscopy, TU Wien（透射电子显微镜大学服务中心，维也纳工业大学）；Institute of Production Engineering and Photonic Technologies, TU Wien（生产工程与光子技术研究所，维也纳工业大学）
One of the possible types of n-th order ghost imaging is experimentally performed using multi-photon (higher-order) intensity correlations of pseudothermal light. It is shown that although increasing the order of intensity correlations leads to the growth of ghost imaging visibility, it at the same time reduces the signal-to-noise ratio. Therefore, ghost imaging with thermal light is optimal in the second order in the intensity.
We present a theoretical study of ghost imaging by using blackbody radiation source. A Gaussian thin lens equation for the ghost imaging, which depends on both paths, is derived. The dependences of the visibility and quality of the image on the transverse size and temperature of the blackbody are studied. The main differences between the ghost imaging by using the blackbody radiation and by using the entangled photon pairs are image-forming equation, and the visibility and quality of the image
Non-degenerate wavelength computational ghost imaging with thermal light source is studied theoretically and experimentally. The acquired computational ghost images are of high quality when the wavelength of computed light is different from the light detected by bucket detector. Compared to the necessary light of short wavelength in previous ghost imaging, the use of longer wavelength light is demonstrated to bring about ghost images with higher spatial resolution, in strong atmospheric turbulence.
Quantum Ghost Imaging (QGI) is an intriguing imaging protocol that exploits photon-pair correlations stemming from spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). QGI retrieves images from two-path joint measurements, where single-path detection does not allow to reconstruct the target image. This technique, has been so far limited in terms of acquisition speed either by raster scanning, or by the slow electronics of intensified cameras. Here we report on a fast QGI implementation exploiting a SPAD array detector for the spatially resolving path, enabling the acquisition of a ghost image in und…
Frequency correlations are a versatile and powerful tool which can be exploited to perform spectral analysis of objects whose direct measurement might be unfeasible. This is achieved through a so-called ghost spectrometer, that can be implemented with quantum and classical resources alike. While there are some known advantages associated to either choice, an analysis of their metrological capabilities has not yet been performed. Here we report on the metrological comparison between a quantum and a classical ghost spectrometer. We perform the estimation of the transmittivity of a bandpass filte…
In this paper, we propose a theoretical scheme of ghost imaging in terms of $N$th-order correlated thermal light. We obtain the Gaussian thin lens equations in the ghost imaging protocol. We show that it is possible to produce $N-1$ ghost images of an object at different places in a nonlocal fashion by means of a higher-order correlated imaging process with an $N$th-order correlated thermal source and correlation measurement. We investigate the visibility of the ghost images in the scheme, and obtain the upper bounds of the visibility for the $N$th-order correlated thermal-light ghost imaging.…
Computational ghost imaging has been demonstrated experimentally recently. In this comment we wish to clarify the difference between pseudothermal ghost imaging (PGI) and computational ghost imaging (CGI). In particular, to emphasize the physics that arises from the difference in the type of sources used. The experiment in [2] is not a PGI experiment but is a simulation of PGI. If we consider CGI at the single photon level, it becomes clear that CGI relies on two identical photons, one real and one simulated, to obtain an image.
One of the most surprising consequences of quantum mechanics is the nonlocal multi-particle interference observable in joint-detection of distant particle-detectors. Ghost imaging is one of such phenomena. Two types of ghost imaging have been experimentally demonstrated since 1995. Type-one ghost imaging uses entangled photon pairs as the light source. The nonlocal point-to-point image-forming correlation is the result of a constructive-destructive superposition among a large number of biphoton amplitudes, a nonclassical entity corresponding to different yet indistinguishable alternative ways …
In this paper it is proved that the key to understanding the ghost imaging mystery are the crossing symmetric photon reactions in the nonlinear media. Hence, the laws of the plane quantum mirror (QM) and that of spherical quantum mirror, observed in the ghost imaging experiments, are obtained as natural consequences of the energy-momentum conservation laws. So, it is shown that the ghost imaging laws depend only on the energy-momentum conservation and not on the photons entanglement. The extension of these results to the ghost imaging with other kind of light is discussed. Some fundamental exp…
Ghost-imaging experiments correlate the outputs from two photodetectors: a high spatial-resolution (scanning pinhole or CCD camera) detector that measures a field which has not interacted with the object to be imaged, and a bucket (single-pixel) detector that collects a field that has interacted with the object. We describe a computational ghost-imaging arrangement that uses only a single-pixel detector. This configuration affords background-free imagery in the narrowband limit and a 3D sectioning capability. It clearly indicates the classical nature of ghost-image formation.
Much more image details can be resolved by improving the system's imaging resolution and enhancing the resolution beyond the system's Rayleigh diffraction limit is generally called super-resolution. By combining the sparse prior property of images with the ghost imaging method, we demonstrated experimentally that super-resolution imaging can be nonlocally achieved in the far field even without looking at the object. Physical explanation of super-resolution ghost imaging via compressive sampling and its potential applications are also discussed.
Efforts on enhancing the ghost imaging speed and quality are intensified when the debate around the nature of ghost imaging (quantum vs. classical) is suspended for a while. Accordingly, most of the studies these years in the field fall into the improvement regarding these two targets by utilizing the different imaging mediums. Nevertheless, back to the raging debate occurred but with different focus, to overcome the inherent difficulties in the classical imaging domain, if we are able to utilize the superiority that quantum information science offers us, the ghost imaging experiment may be im…
We demonstrate a compressive normalized ghost imaging system with entangled photons employing complementary compressive imaging (CCI) technique. The quantum ghost image reconstruction was achieved at only 19.53% sampling ratio of raster scanning. With the special +1/-1 type sensing matrix and appropriate optimal algorithm, the photon utilization efficiency and robustness of the imaging system is enhanced significantly. Our results reveal the great potential of CCI technique applied in quantum imaging and other quantum optics field such as quantum charactering and quantum state tomography to us…
High-resolution ghost image and ghost diffraction experiments are performed by using a single source of thermal-like speckle light divided by a beam splitter. Passing from the image to the diffraction result solely relies on changing the optical setup in the reference arm, while leaving untouched the object arm. The product of spatial resolutions of the ghost image and ghost diffraction experiments is shown to overcome a limit which was formerly thought to be achievable only with entangled photons.
Recent work has indicated that ghost imaging may have applications in standoff sensing. However, most theoretical work has addressed transmission-based ghost imaging. To be a viable remote-sensing system, the ghost imager needs to image rough-surfaced targets in reflection through long, turbulent optical paths. We develop, within a Gaussian-state framework, expressions for the spatial resolution, image contrast, and signal-to-noise ratio of such a system. We consider rough-surfaced targets that create fully developed speckle in their returns, and Kolmogorov-spectrum turbulence that is uniforml…
As one of important analysis tools, microscopes with high spatial resolution are indispensable for scientific research and medical diagnosis, and much attention is always focused on the improvement of resolution. Over the past decade, a novel technique called ghost imaging has been developed that may provide a new approach toward increasing the resolution of an imaging system. In this paper, we introduce this technique into microscopes for the first time and report a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration of a microscope scheme based on ghost imaging.
Ghost imaging is a method to nonlocally image an object by transmitting pairs of entangled photons through the object and a reference optical system respectively. We present a theoretical analysis of the quantum noise in this imaging technique. The dependence of the noise on the properties of the apertures in the imaging system are discussed and demonstrated with a numerical example. For a given source, the resolution and the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved at the same time .
In the conventional ghost imaging (GI), the image is retrieved by correlating the reference intensity fluctuation at a charge-coupled device (CCD) with the signal intensity fluctuation at a bucket detector. In this letter, we present the protocol of GI, it is called Second-order Cumulants ghost imaging (SCGI). The image is retrieved by the fluctuation information of correlating intensity fluctuation at two detectors, and the resolution limit can be enhanced than conventional GI. The experimental results of SCGI agreement with theoretical results.
We present a complete and exhaustive theory of signal-to-noise-ratio in bipartite ghost imaging with classical (thermal) and quantum (twin beams) light. The theory is compared with experiment for both twin beams and thermal light in a certain regime of interest.
We provide a unified treatment of classical and quantum Gaussian-state sources that unambiguously identifies which features of ghost imaging are strictly quantum mechanical. We show that ghost-image formation is fundamentally classical, with the image being expressible in terms of the phase-insensitive and phase-sensitive cross correlations between the detected fields. We then consider ghost-imaging scenarios with either phase-insensitive or phase-sensitive sources, where the former are always classical but the latter may be classical or quantum mechanical. We show that if their auto-correlati…
We propose a quantum ghost imaging scheme based on biphotons, that, by using a collimated pump beam of the right size for biphoton generation, obviates the need for lenses to achieve imaging. The scheme is found to be analogous to the classical pinhole camera, where we show that the equivalent to the classical pinhole size depends mainly on the width of the pump beam, but also on the thickness of the nonlinear crystal and the wavelengths of the biphoton.
We present the first experimental demonstration of ghost imaging realized with intense beams generated by a parametric downconversion interaction seeded with pseudo-thermal light. As expected, the real image of the object is reconstructed satisfying the thin-lens equation. We show that the experimental visibility of the reconstructed image is in accordance with the theoretically expected one.
We propose a experimental scenario of edge enhancement ghost imaging of phase objects with nonlocal orbital angular momentum (OAM) phase filters. Spatially incoherent thermal light is separated into two daughter beams, the test and reference beams, in which the detected objects and phase filters are symmetrically placed,respectively. The results of simulation experiment prove that the edge enhanced ghost images of phase objects can be achieved through the second-order light field intensity correlation measurement owing to the OAM correlation characteristics. Further simulation results demonstr…
Ghost imaging is a technique -- first realized in quantum optics -- in which the image emerges from cross-correlation between particles in two separate beams. One beam passes through the object to a bucket (single-pixel) detector, while the second beam's spatial profile is measured by a high resolution (multi-pixel) detector but never interacts with the object. Neither detector can reconstruct the image independently. However, until now ghost imaging has only been demonstrated with photons. Here we report the first realisation of ghost imaging of an object using massive particles. In our exper…
We address parametric-downconversion seeded by multimode pseudo-thermal fields. We show that this process may be used to generate multimode pairwise correlated states with entanglement properties that can be tuned by controlling the seed intensities. Multimode pseudo-thermal fields seeded parametric-downconversion represents a novel source of correlated states, which allows one to explore the classical-quantum transition in pairwise correlations and to realize ghost imaging and ghost diffraction in regimes not yet explored by experiments.
