The coincidence fractional Fourier transforms with entangled photon pairs and with incoherent light are introduced. Optical systems for implementing the two coincidence fractional Fourier transforms are designed. The difference between the two coincidence fractional Fourier transforms is discussed.
The coincidence subwavelength fractional Fourier transforms (FRTs) with entangled photon pairs and incoherent light radiation are introduced as an extension of the recently introduced coincidence FRT. Optical systems for implementing the coincidence subwavelength FRTs are designed. The width of the coincidence subwavelength FRT pattern is two times narrower than the width of the coincidence FRT. The coincidence subwavelength FRT with partially coherent light radiation is also studied numerically. Differences between the coincidence subwavelength FRT with entangled photon pairs and that with incoherent light radiation are discussed.
Entangled-photon coincidence imaging is a method to nonlocally image an object by transmitting a pair of entangled photons through the object and a reference optical system, respectively. The image of the object can be extracted from the coincidence rate of these two photons. From a classical perspective, the image is proportional to the fourth-order correlation function of the wave field. Using classical statistical optics, we study a particular aspect of coincidence imaging with incoherent sources. As an application, we give a proposal to realize lensless Fourier-transform imaging, and discuss its applicability in x-ray diffraction.
Fourier transforms, integer and fractional, are ubiquitous mathematical tools in basic and applied science. Certainly, since the ordinary Fourier transform is merely a particular case of a continuous set of fractional Fourier domains, every property and application of the ordinary Fourier transform becomes a special case of the fractional Fourier transform. Despite the great practical importance of the discrete Fourier transform, implementation of fractional orders of the corresponding discrete operation has been elusive. Here we report classical and quantum optical realizations of the discrete fractional Fourier transform. In the context of classical optics, we implement discrete fractional Fourier transforms of exemplary wave functions and experimentally demonstrate the shift theorem. Moreover, we apply this approach in the quantum realm to Fourier transform separable and path-entangled biphoton wave functions. The proposed approach is versatile and could find applications in various fields where Fourier transforms are essential tools.