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arXiv:2103.16769 · Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Temporal and spatial superbunching effects from a pair of modulated distinguishable classical lights

Sheng Luo, Huaibin Zheng, Wanting Xu, Yuchen He, Shuanghao Zhang, Jingkun Tian, Zhuo Xu

Published Jun 3, 2021• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

From the Feynman path integration theory of view, the Hanbury Brown–Twiss effect would not be observed for one definite two-photon propagation path, as well as the superbunching effect. Here, temporal and spatial superbunching effects are measured from a pair of modulated distinguishable classical lights. These interesting phenomena are realized by passing two orthogonal polarized laser beams through two rotating ground glass plates in sequence. To understand the underlying physical process, the intensity fluctuation correlation theory is developed to describe the superbunching effect in the temporal and spatial domains, which agrees with experimental results well. Such experimental results are conducive to the study of the superbunching effect, which plays an important role in improving the performance in related applications, such as the contrast of ghost imaging.

DOI
10.1364/josab.426716

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From the Feynman path integration theory of view, the Hanbury Brown–Twiss effect would not be observed for one definite two-photon propagation path, as well as the superbunching effect. Here, temporal and spatial superbunching effects are measured from a pair of modulated distinguishable classical lights. These interesting phenomena are realized by passing two orthogonal polarized laser beams through two rotating ground glass plates in sequence. To understand the underlying physical process, the intensity fluctuation correlation theory is developed to describe the superbunching effect in the temporal and spatial domains, which agrees with experimental results well. Such experimental results are conducive to the study of the superbunching effect, which plays an important role in improving the performance in related applications, such as the contrast of ghost imaging.
Two-photon superbunching of classical light is observed with single-mode continuous-wave laser light in a linear optical system. By adding more two-photon paths via rotating ground glasses, pinholes, lens, etc., g(2)(0)=7.10±0.07 is experimentally observed. The second-order temporal coherence function of the superbunching pseudothermal light is theoretically and experimentally studied in detail. It is predicted that the degree of coherence can be increased dramatically by adding more multi-photon paths. For instance, the degree of the second- and third-order coherence of the superbunching pseudothermal light with five rotating ground glasses can reach 32 and 7776, respectively. The results are helpful to understanding the physics of superbunching and improving the visibility of thermal light ghost imaging.
Since Hanbury Brown and Twiss revealed the photon bunching effect of a thermal light source in 1956, almost all studies in correlation optics have been based on light’s intensity fluctuation, regardless of fact that the polarization fluctuation is a basic attribute of natural light. In this work, we uncover the veil of the polarization fluctuation and corresponding photon correlations by proposing a new light source model, termed pseudo-natural light, embodying both intensity and polarization fluctuations. Unexpectedly, the strong antibunching and superbunching effects can be simultaneously realized in such a new source, whose second-order correlation coefficient g ( 2 ) can be continuously modulated across 1. For the symmetric Bernoulli distribution of the polarization fluctuation, particularly, g ( 2 ) can be in principle from 0 to unlimitedly large. In pseudo-natural light, while the bunching effects of both intensity and polarization fluctuations enhance the bunching to superbunching photon correlation, the antibunching correlation of the polarization fluctuation can also be extracted through the procedure of division operation in the experiment. The antibunching effect and the combination with the bunching one will arouse new applications in quantum imaging. As heuristic examples, we carry out high-quality positive or negative ghost imaging, and devise high-efficiency polarization-sensitive and edge-enhanced imaging. This work, therefore, sheds light on the development of multiple and broad correlation functions for natural light.
Two-photon correlation phenomena, including the historical experiment of Hanbury Brown and Twiss, may have to be described quantum mechanically, regardless of whether the source of radiation is classical or quantum. Supporting this point, we present a ghost imaging type of second-order spatial correlation experiment of chaotic light to show that the classical understanding based on the concept of statistical intensity fluctuations does not give a correct interpretation for the observation. From a practical point of view, this experiment demonstrates the possibility of having high contrast lensless two-photon imaging with chaotic light, suggesting imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.
We proposed to boost the photon bunching effect of classical light via a modified Fabry-Pérot cavity with one of the cavity mirrors being replaced by a spatial light modulator, through which multiple independent transverse modulations, each was to encode independently spatially correlated phase on the wave front of the light field, was cascaded in sequence in the longitudinal propagation direction in the cavity. The two-photon bunching peak and the three-photon bunching peak of the generated superbunching light field were measured to be 36.9±2.036.9\pm2.036.9±2.0 and (2.46±0.12)×103\rm (2.46\pm0.12)\times10^{3}(2.46±0.12)×103, respectively, which, as compared to those of thermal light, were improved by one-order and three-order of magnitude, respectively. Correspondingly, the ghost image visibility reconstructed with the superbunching light was demonstrated experimentally to be improved by ∼40\sim 40∼40 times as compared to that with the pseudo-thermal light. Such classical superbunching light field is of essential importance not only for fundamental physics but also for potential applications such as correlated imaging, ghost interference and nonlinear optics.
We report on the two-photon superbunching effect of thermal light via constructive multiple two-photon path interference, showing the possibility of controlling the bunching property of thermal light in a linear optical system. By inserting nnn pairs of mutually first-order incoherent optical channels as a cascade into the traditional Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) interferometer, the two-photon bunching peak-to-background ratio of thermal light can be increased by up to $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1.{5}^{n}$, surpassing the theoretical upper limit of 2 for a traditional HBT interferometer. Experimentally, the ratio was measured to be $2.4\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.1$ when one pair of optical channels was inserted. Such a scheme can be viewed as a prototype of a two-photon grating.
Two-photon correlation phenomena of chaotic light, including the historical Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, are essentially quantum effect of two-photon interference, instead of classical statistical correlation between intensity fluctuations. To support our view, we analyze a "ghost" imaging experiment with chaotic light for which the classical understanding does not give a satisfactory interpretation. We also provide a two-photon optical picture of ghost imaging with chaotic light in terms of two-photon phase-conjugate mirror which suggests lensless imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.