Single photon–level imaging at 1550 nanometers is a key driver for crucial advancements in the next-generation laser detection technology. This cutting-edge approach plays a vital role in space ranging, target recognition, and three-dimensional remote sensing. However, it has faced severe challenges such as insufficient noise-tolerant performance. Here, we introduced noise-tolerant correlated coincidence imaging (CCI) based on supercorrelated light (SCL). The light source, generated through nonlinear interaction between a pulsed laser and a photonic crystal fiber, exhibits a broader power-law photon number probability distribution and extremely strong photon correlation [with second-order correlation function g (2) (0) up to 18,166]. Our noise-tolerant CCI can resist random environmental noise up to 100,000 times stronger than the echo signal photons. SCL offers an exceptionally strong noise tolerance for single photon–level imaging in extreme environments with intense noise, paving the way for the future development of extremely sensitive light detection.
Single photon–level imaging at 1550 nanometers is a key driver for crucial advancements in the next-generation laser detection technology. This cutting-edge approach plays a vital role in space ranging, target recognition, and three-dimensional remote sensing. However, it has faced severe challenges such as insufficient noise-tolerant performance. Here, we introduced noise-tolerant correlated coincidence imaging (CCI) based on supercorrelated light (SCL). The light source, generated through nonlinear interaction between a pulsed laser and a photonic crystal fiber, exhibits a broader power-law photon number probability distribution and extremely strong photon correlation [with second-order correlation function g (2) (0) up to 18,166]. Our noise-tolerant CCI can resist random environmental noise up to 100,000 times stronger than the echo signal photons. SCL offers an exceptionally strong noise tolerance for single photon–level imaging in extreme environments with intense noise, paving the way for the future development of extremely sensitive light detection.
Correlation imaging based on entangled light sources offers potential benefits over classical single-photon imaging (SPI) in noisy environments, but also faces challenges such as low brightness, long integration times, and difficulty imaging biological organisms. Here, we propose noise-resistant biologically correlated biphoton imaging (CPI) based on a super-bunching light source, addressing the challenge of severe signal-to-noise ratio degradation in conventional SPI schemes. Our CPI, based on a super-bunching light source with high brightness, broadband spectrum (400–1100 nm), and strong quantum correlation (g 2 (0) ∼ 250), delivers high-performance, noise-resistant operation by extracting correlated photon pairs between the reference and signal paths. Experimental results show that under extreme noise conditions (noise-to-signal ratio up to 600), the structural profile in conventional SPI is entirely obscured by noise. In contrast, CPI still clearly resolves the target structure. Quantitative analysis further reveals that, as noise intensity increases, the imaging visibility of CPI can be enhanced by more than two orders of magnitude compared to SPI schemes. This study confirms the exceptional robustness and practical utility of super-bunching light-based correlated imaging in high-noise environments, offering an effective technical approach for high-quality biological observation in complex optical conditions.
Single-photon detection (SPD) technologies have been applied to underwater optical imaging to overcome the strong attenuation of seawater.However, external photon noise, resulting from the natural light, hinders their further applications due to the extreme sensitivity of SPD and a weakly received optical signal.In this work, we performed noise-resistant underwater correlated biphoton imaging (CPI) to partly solve the influence of the external noise, through a home-built super-bunching laser generated by the stochastic nonlinear interaction between a picosecond laser and a photonic crystal fiber.Compared with a coherent laser, the probabilities of generated bundle N-photons (N ≥ 2) of the super-bunching laser have been enhanced by at least one order of magnitude, enabling CPI under weak light intensity.We experimentally demonstrated CPI with reasonable imaging contrast under the noise-to-signal ratio (NSR) up to 10 3 , and the noise-resistant performance has been improved by at least two orders of magnitude compared to that of the single-photon imaging technology.We further achieved underwater CPI with good imaging contrast under NSR of 150, in a glass tank with a length of 10 m with Jerlov type III water (an attenuation coefficient of 0.176 m -1 ).These results break the limits of underwater imaging through classical coherent lasers and may offer many enhanced imaging applications through our super-bunching laser, such as long-range target tracking and deep-sea optical exploration under noisy environments.
Quantum imaging utilizes the correlation of photons to enhance the security, covertness, and noise resilience of optical imaging. Despite recent advances, developing a quantum imaging system with long-distance and strong noise resilience remains challenging. Here, we present an experimental demonstration of high-performance quantum imaging at telecom band with enhanced noise resilience. We use a fiber-integrated quantum light source via cascaded second-order nonlinear processes to generate high-quality correlated/entangled photon pairs at telecom band and a fiber-coupled confocal optical system to effectively suppress the background noise and improve the collection efficiency of echo signal photons by optimizing its bandwidth and aperture. In our demonstration, the quantum imaging with correlated/entangled photon pairs or heralded single photons is achieved at a distance of 11 m under indoor illumination. When the detected environment noise is 33 dB stronger than the signal photons, corresponding to a coincidence-to-accidental coincidence ratio of 1.7 ± 0.1, an imaging contrast of 0.23 ± 0.09 is achieved, which is 46 times higher than single-photon imaging without correlation. The results will open venues for the development of practical quantum imaging techniques.
Non-classical light sources emitting bundles of N-photons with strong correlation represent versatile resources of interdisciplinary importance with applications ranging from fundamental tests of quantum mechanics to quantum information processing. Yet, high-order correlations, gN(0),quantifying photon correlation, are still limited to hundreds. Here, we report the generation of a super-bunching light source in photonic crystal fiber with g2(0) reaching 5.86*104 and g5(0) up to 2.72*108, through measuring its photon number probability distributions. under giant g2(0) values, the super-bunching light source presents upturned-tail photon distributions and ubiquitous extreme multi-photon events, where 31 photons from a single light pulse at a mean of 1.99*10-4 photons per pulse have been determined. The probability of this extreme event has been enhanced by 10139 folds compared to a coherent laser with Poissonian distribution. By varying the power of the pumping laser, both photon number distributions and corresponding high-order correlations of this light source can be substantially tailored from Poissonian to super-bunching distributions. These phenomena are attributed to the synchronized nonlinear interactions in photonic crystal fibers pumping by bright squeezed light, and the theoretical simulations agree well with the experimental results. Our research showcases the ability to achieve non-classical light sources with giant high-order correlations and extreme multi-photon events, paving the way for high-order correlation imaging, extreme nonlinear optical effects, quantum information processing, and exploring light-matter interactions with multi-photon physics.
Abstract Accurate detection and identification of space-based faint targets under strong background is a pressing challenge for all‑weather deep space exploration. However, active deep space detection is often hampered by the disturbances of intense stellar stray light and multi-source heterogeneous noise, making it difficult to achieve noise‑blind source separation and accurate identification of weak target signals under extremely low signal-to-noise ratio. To address these challenges, we develop a random dynamic mask modulation scheme to enhance higher-order coherence, unveiling power-law photon number distributions and super-bunching correlations that enable higher-order photon correlation imaging with a single-photon detector array (SPDA). The imaging scheme decouples the target signal from multi-source disturbances including coherent, thermal, and super-bunching light, as well as multiple background noises such as shot noise, environmental stray light, and dark counts. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a super-bunching light with a fiftieth-order photon correlation of 1.45×10 72 at a mean photon number , achieving a 10 42 enhancement in the high-to-second-order correlation ratio. The super-bunching light source enables continuously tunable output intensity from ultra‑weak to extremely bright, overcoming the limitation of conventional sources that produce only ultra‑weak photon numbers. Strikingly, we observe the ratio R n >2 of the multiphoton probability between the signal power-law light and a noise coherent laser reaching 5.29×10 269 at for 281 photons. The contrast in higher-order photon correlation imaging reaches 0.99, increasing by 0.26 over the second-order case. At an imaging exposure time of 5 µs and a mean photon number , we achieve 512×512‑pixel SPDA imaging with a dynamic range of 252.93 dB despite simultaneous photon‑starved signal and intense background. Our noise‑blind scheme establishes ultra‑wide dynamic range, high‑speed, sub-megapixel single‑photon imaging under multi‑source noise and intense optical disturbances, opening new routes for space surveillance and quantum‑enhanced detection.
ABSTRACT High‐performance single‐photon light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology with robust noise resistance provides a powerful means for environmental perception in extreme scenarios. Here, we propose a parallel photon‐correlation (PPC) LiDAR driven by super‐bunching light, enabling noise‐resistant parallel detection in the single‐photon‐counting regime. Using super‐bunching light with g (2) (0) = 177, we demonstrate robust photon‐correlation imaging at a signal‐to‐background ratio (SBR) of 1:2750 in the 2D parallel imaging experiment, and also achieve noise‐resistant three‐dimensional (3D) target reconstruction. Leveraging the correlation between the reference and echo signals, PPC LiDAR enables parallel ranging up to 165 m in a single‐channel, beyond the distance threshold limited by the pulse period. In the outdoor imaging experiment, parallel imaging over 40 m was achieved. By combining 10‐channel parallel detection with robust noise resistance, PPC LiDAR provides a light‐source‐based solution for single‐photon LiDAR operation under extreme conditions, distinct from experimental quantum illumination. Our PPC LiDAR scheme opens a new pathway toward the next generation of high‐performance environmental perception technology.