EPR-based ghost imaging using a single-photon-sensitive camera

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates high-contrast ghost imaging using a single-photon-sensitive camera that captures the entire scene simultaneously, significantly improving sampling efficiency over traditional scanning methods.

Contribution

It introduces a method to perform ghost imaging with a time-gated camera, eliminating the need for scanning and enabling high-contrast, multi-mode imaging in the quantum regime.

Findings

Achieved 90% contrast images in the image and far-field planes.

Captured over 500 modes, enhancing low-light and quantum information applications.

Overcame sampling inefficiency of traditional ghost imaging techniques.

Abstract

Correlated-photon imaging, popularly known as ghost imaging, is a technique whereby an image is formed from light that has never interacted with the object. In ghost imaging experiments two correlated light fields are produced. One of these fields illuminates the object, and the other field is measured by a spatially resolving detector. In the quantum regime, these correlated light fields are produced by entangled photons created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. To date, all correlated-photon ghost-imaging experiments have scanned a single-pixel detector through the field of view to obtain the spatial information. However, scanning leads to a poor sampling efficiency, which scales inversely with the number of pixels, N, in the image. In this work we overcome this limitation by using a time-gated camera to record the single-photon events across the full scene. We obtain high-contrast images, 90%, in either the image plane or the far-field of the photon pair source, taking advantage of the EPR-like correlations in position and momentum of the photon pairs. Our images contain a large number of modes, >500, creating opportunities in low-light-level imaging and in quantum information processing.