Speckle fluctuations resolve the interdistance between incoherent point sources in complex media

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that speckle fluctuations can be used to determine the distance between two incoherent point sources in complex media with high precision, using intensity measurements at a single point.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method leveraging speckle fluctuations to measure intersource distance, surpassing diffraction limits and offering an alternative to Green function retrieval.

Findings

Speckle contrast encodes intersource distance.

Single-point intensity measurements can determine source separation.

Method works in complex disordered environments.

Abstract

We study the fluctuations of the light emitted by two identical incoherent point sources in a disordered environment. The intensity-intensity correlation function and the speckle contrast, obtained after proper temporal and configurational averaging, encode the relative distance between the two sources. This suggests the intriguing possibility that intensity measurements at only one point in a speckle pattern produced by two incoherent sources can provide information about the relative distance between the sources, with a precision that is not limited by diffraction. The theory also suggests an alternative approach to Green function retrieval technique, where the correlations of the isotropic ambient noise detected by two receivers are replaced by a measurement at a single point of the noise due to two fluctuating incoherent sources.