A theoretical scheme of thermal-light ghost imaging by $N$th-order intensity correlation

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical framework for $N$th-order correlated thermal-light ghost imaging, demonstrating the possibility of producing multiple nonlocal ghost images with enhanced visibility through higher-order correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical scheme for $N$th-order thermal-light ghost imaging, deriving Gaussian lens equations and analyzing visibility bounds.

Findings

Multiple ghost images can be generated nonlocally at different locations.

Visibility of ghost images increases with higher correlation order.

Upper bounds of image visibility are derived and analyzed.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a theoretical scheme of ghost imaging in terms of $N$th-order correlated thermal light. We obtain the Gaussian thin lens equations in the ghost imaging protocol. We show that it is possible to produce $N-1$ ghost images of an object at different places in a nonlocal fashion by means of a higher-order correlated imaging process with an $N$th-order correlated thermal source and correlation measurement. We investigate the visibility of the ghost images in the scheme, and obtain the upper bounds of the visibility for the $N$th-order correlated thermal-light ghost imaging. It is found that the visibility of the ghost images can be dramatically enhanced when the order of correlation becomes larger.