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Chinese Optics Letters

Reflective ghost imaging with classical Gaussian-state light

Deyang Duan, Yunjie Xia Yunjie Xia

Published Jan 1, 2012• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this letter, we use quantum description and the Gaussian state to study reflective ghost imaging with two classical sources, and to provide their expressions.We find that the reflective ghost imaging of a roughsurfaced object, using Gaussian-state phase-insensitive or classically correlated phase-sensitive light, can be expressed in terms of the phase-insensitive or phase-sensitive cross-correlations between the two detected fields, including a background term.Moreover, reflective ghost imaging with two classical Gaussian-state lights is shown to have similar features as spatial resolution and field of view.

DOI
10.3788/col201210.031102

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In this letter, we use quantum description and the Gaussian state to study reflective ghost imaging with two classical sources, and to provide their expressions.We find that the reflective ghost imaging of a roughsurfaced object, using Gaussian-state phase-insensitive or classically correlated phase-sensitive light, can be expressed in terms of the phase-insensitive or phase-sensitive cross-correlations between the two detected fields, including a background term.Moreover, reflective ghost imaging with two classical Gaussian-state lights is shown to have similar features as spatial resolution and field of view.
In this letter,we use quantum description and the Gaussian state to study reflective ghost imaging with two classical sources,and to provide their expressions.We find that the reflective ghost imaging of a roughsurfaced object,using Gaussian-state phase-insensitive or classically correlated phase-sensitive light,can be expressed in terms of the phase-insensitive or phase-sensitive cross-correlations between the two detected fields,including a background term.Moreover,reflective ghost imaging with two classical Gaussian-state lights is shown to have similar features as spatial resolution and field of view.
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-correlations are identical, then a quantum source provides resolution improvement in its near-field and field-of-view improvement in its far field when compared to a classical source.
The theory of ghost imaging is developed in a Gaussian-state framework that both encompasses prior work---on thermal-state and biphoton-state imagers---and provides a complete understanding of the boundary between classical and quantum behavior in such systems. The core of this analysis is the expression derived for the photocurrent-correlation image obtained using a general Gaussian-state source. This image is expressed in terms of the phase-insensitive and phase-sensitive cross correlations between the two detected fields, plus a background. Because any pair of cross correlations is obtainable with classical Gaussian states, the image does not carry a quantum signature per se. However, if the image characteristics of classical and nonclassical Gaussian-state sources with identical autocorrelation functions are compared, the nonclassical source provides resolution improvement in its near field and field-of-view improvement in its far field.
The theory of partial coherence has a long and storied history in classical statistical optics. The vast majority of this work addresses fields that are statistically stationary in time, hence their complex envelopes only have phase-insensitive correlations. The quantum optics of squeezed-state generation, however, depends on nonlinear interactions producing baseband field operators with phase-insensitive and phase-sensitive correlations. Utilizing quantum light to enhance imaging has been a topic of considerable current interest, much of it involving biphotons, i.e., streams of entangled-photon pairs. Biphotons have been employed for quantum versions of optical coherence tomography, ghost imaging, holography, and lithography. However, their seemingly quantum features have been mimicked with classical-state light, questioning wherein lies the classical-quantum boundary. We have shown, for the case of Gaussian-state light, that this boundary is intimately connected to the theory of phase-sensitive partial coherence. Here we present that theory, contrasting it with the familiar case of phase-insensitive partial coherence, and use it to elucidate the classical-quantum boundary of ghost imaging. We show, both theoretically and experimentally, that classical phase-sensitive light produces ghost images most closely mimicking those obtained with biphotons, and we derive the spatial resolution, image contrast, and signal-to-noise ratio of a standoff-sensing ghost imager, taking into account target-induced speckle.
The signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of three Gaussian-state ghost-imaging configurations---distinguished by the nature of their light sources---are derived. Two use classical-state light, specifically a joint signal-reference field state that has either the maximum phase-insensitive or the maximum phase-sensitive cross correlation consistent with having a proper PPP representation. The third uses nonclassical light, in particular an entangled signal-reference field state with the maximum phase-sensitive cross correlation permitted by quantum mechanics. Analytic SNR expressions are developed for the near-field and far-field regimes, within which simple asymptotic approximations are presented for low-brightness and high-brightness sources. A high-brightness thermal-state (classical phase-insensitive state) source will typically achieve a higher SNR than a biphoton-state (low-brightness, low-flux limit of the entangled-state) source, when all other system parameters are equal for the two systems. With high efficiency photon-number-resolving detectors, a low-brightness, high-flux entangled-state source may achieve a higher SNR than that obtained with a high-brightness thermal-state source.