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Optics Express

Quantum ghost imaging of a vector field

Zhixiang Li, Dong Qing Zhu, Jiang-Shan Tang, Ming‐Yuan Chen, Ya-Ping Ruan, Jianji Liu, Han Zhang, Peng Chen, Keyu Xia, Lijian Zhang, Yanqing Lu

Published Jan 26, 2024• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum ghost image technique utilizing position or momentum correlations between entangled photons can realize nonlocal reconstruction of the image of an object. In this work, based on polarization entanglement, we experimentally demonstrate quantum ghost imaging of vector images by using a geometric phase object. We also provide a corresponding theoretical analysis. Additionally, we offer a geometrical optics path explanation of ghost imaging for vector fields. The proposed strategy offers new insights into the fundamental development of ghost imaging and also holds great promise for developing complex structured ghost imaging techniques. Our work expanding the principle of ghost imaging to spatially varying vector beams will lead to interesting developments of this field.

DOI
10.1364/oe.508060

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Quantum ghost image technique utilizing position or momentum correlations between entangled photons can realize nonlocal reconstruction of the image of an object. In this work, based on polarization entanglement, we experimentally demonstrate quantum ghost imaging of vector images by using a geometric phase object. We also provide a corresponding theoretical analysis. Additionally, we offer a geometrical optics path explanation of ghost imaging for vector fields. The proposed strategy offers new insights into the fundamental development of ghost imaging and also holds great promise for developing complex structured ghost imaging techniques. Our work expanding the principle of ghost imaging to spatially varying vector beams will lead to interesting developments of this field.
A transparent polarisation sensitive phase pattern exhibits a position and polarisation dependent phase shift of transmitted light and it represents a unitary transformation. A quantum ghost image of this pattern is produced with hyper-entangled photons consisting of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) and polarisation entanglement. In quantum ghost imaging, a single photon interacts with the pattern and is detected by a stationary detector and a non-interacting photon is imaged on a coincidence camera. EPR entanglement manifests spatial correlations between an object plane and a ghost image plane, whereas a polarisation dependent phase shift exhibited by the pattern is detected with polarisation entanglement. In this quantum ghost imaging, the which-position-polarisation information of a photon interacting with the pattern is not present in the experiment. A quantum ghost image is constructed by measuring correlations of the polarisation-momentum of an interacting photon with polarisation-position of a non-interacting photon. The experiment is performed with a coincidence single photon detection camera, where a non-interacting photon travels a long optical path length of 17.83 m from source to camera and a pattern is positioned at an optical distance of 19.16 m from the camera.
The concept of quantum entanglement and hyper-entanglement, lying at the heart of quantum information science and technologies, is physically counter-intuitive and mathematically elusive. We design a polarization-encoded ghost imaging system based on the frame of Hardy nonlocality paradox to visualize the evidence of quantum hyper-entanglement by capturing purely nonlocal photonic events. In two-photon polarization-spatial-mode hyper-entangled state, spatial entanglement con-veys the ghost images while polarization entanglement encodes the imaging channels. Then whether imaging the single ghost image of a skull-shape object or not can be a direct yet intuitive signature to support or defy quantum mechanics. We use the contrast-to-noise ratio of ghost images to macroscopically characterize the degree of the violation of locality. We also showcase the nonlocal behavior of violating the locality with a reasonable confidence level of 75%, microscopically at the single-pixel level. Our strategy not only sheds new light on the fundamental issue of quantum mechanics, but also holds promise for developing hyper-entanglement-based quantum imaging technology.
Quantum ghost imaging is a nonlocal imaging technique in which the image or diffraction pattern of an object illuminated by photon pairs can be observed through the correlation measurement. This study theoretically demonstrates the cloaking effect of such a quantum imaging. Quantum ghost imaging completely offsets two objects that are placed at proper positions in the interferometer. Furthermore, illusion of quantum imaging, where an object transforms into another object, has also been observed. This phenomenon can be understood by quantum interferences in the correlation measurement.
Quantum ghost imaging harnesses entangled photon pairs to form images using light that never directly interacts with the object. Conventional approaches rely on pixelated detectors or spatial masks, where the resolution is fundamentally limited by the pixel size and thus bounded by the Rayleigh criterion. In this work, we present a modal approach that replaces pixel-based detection with measurements in a basis of structured modes. By reconstructing images through tailored spatial modes, we decouple resolution from the physical limitations of detectors and instead tie it to the system’s optical precision and computational control. We demonstrate that even non-orthogonal modal sets can achieve high fidelity image reconstruction by exploiting modal sparsity, significantly reducing the number of required measurements. Using phase-only approximations of Hermite-Gaussian modes, we avoid the loss associated with complex amplitude modulation while retaining high reconstruction fidelity. The result is a high-resolution, high-efficiency quantum ghost imaging technique powered by structured light, opening new possibilities for photon-efficient imaging in low-light and quantum-limited regimes, such as biological microscopy and remote sensing.
Ghost imaging was first demonstrated with entangled photon pairs and well-known for its peculiar properties. The signal beam that illuminates the object possesses no spatial resolution, whereas the reference beam, which never interacts with the object, is spatially resolved. Either beam alone cannot retrieve the image, which can only be obtained when the signal and reference beams are correlated. Here we will report a ghost imaging experiment with even more peculiar properties, in which the image can be reconstructed when no photon interacts with the object or even no photon in neither signal nor reference beam. All the photons interacted with the object are discarded. Only the time bins with zero photon are employed to retrieve the image, a process referred to as "ghost imaging with zero photons" hereafter. The reason why ghost image can be retrieved with zero photons is jointly determined by photon-number projection measurement and photon statistics of thermal light. The results are helpful to resolve the debate on the physics of ghost imaging and understand the relation between quantum and classical correlations.
Abstract. The field of Quantum Imaging exploits the quantum nature of light and the intrinsic parallelism of optical signals to devise novel techniques for optical imaging and for parallel information processing at the quantum level (see [1] and references quoted therein). In this presentation, we will shortly discuss two topics in this area: the first is the so-called ghost imaging which, however, is not necessarily quantum; the second is the detection of faint amplitude objects with a sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit, and in this case we are fully in the quantum domain. Both topics are related to the phenomenon of optical parametric down-conversion (PDC), in which a fraction of the pump photons of a laser beam, injected into a crystal with a quadratic non-linearity, are down-converted to a pair of signal and idler photons, with conservation of total energy and total momentum. A feature of paramount importance is that the signal and idler beams are spatially correlated both in the near field (position correlation) and in the far field (momentum correlation).The simultaneous presence of position and momentum correlation implies quantum entanglement, as it has been also observed experimentally [2]. 1. Ghost Imaging