Two-photon super bunching of thermal light via multiple two-photon-path interference

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for enhancing two-photon super bunching of thermal light using multiple two-photon-path interference, significantly improving the bunching ratio and potential applications in ghost imaging.

Contribution

It presents a novel scheme involving a modified Michelson interferometer to achieve higher super bunching ratios of thermal light compared to traditional methods.

Findings

Experimental super bunching ratio reached 2.4, surpassing traditional 1.7.

Theoretically, the ratio can be increased to 2×1.5^n with cascading channels.

Potential to improve visibility in classical ghost imaging.

Abstract

We propose a novel scheme to achieve two-photon super bunching of thermal light through multiple two-photon-path interference, in which two mutually first-order incoherent optical channels are introduced by inserting a modified Michelson interferometer into a traditional two-photon HBT interferometer, and the bunching peak-to-background ratio can reach 3 theoretically. Experimentally, the super bunching peak-to-background ratio was measured to be 2.4, much larger than the ratio 1.7 measured with the same thermal source in a traditional HBT interferometer. The peak-to-background ratio of two-photon super bunching of thermal light can be increased up to $2\times1.5^n$ by inserting cascadingly $n$ pairs of mutually first-order incoherent optical channels into the traditional two-photon HBT interferometer. The two-photon super bunching of thermal light should be of great significance in improving the visibility of classical ghost imaging.