Long-distance thermal temporal ghost imaging over optical fibers

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a long-distance thermal ghost imaging method over optical fibers using frequency correlations and dispersion, enabling remote imaging with weak thermal light sources over 50 km fiber links.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel long-distance thermal ghost imaging scheme over optical fibers, utilizing frequency correlation and dispersion, with experimental validation over 50 km fibers.

Findings

Successful remote ghost imaging over 50 km fiber link

Use of spontaneous four-wave mixing for thermal light source

Effective imaging based on frequency correlation

Abstract

A thermal ghost imaging scheme between two distant parties is proposed and experimentally demonstrated over long-distance optical fibers. In the scheme, the weak thermal light is split into two paths. Photons in one path are spatially diffused according to their frequencies by a spatial dispersion component, then illuminate the object and record its spatial transmission information. Photons in the other path are temporally diffused by a temporal dispersion component. By the coincidence measurement between photons of two paths, the object can be imaged in a way of ghost imaging, based on the frequency correlation between photons in the two paths. In the experiment, the weak thermal light source is prepared by the spontaneous four-wave mixing in a silicon waveguide. The temporal dispersion is introduced by single mode fibers of 50 km, which also could be looked as a fiber link. Experimental results show that this scheme can be realized over long-distance optical fibers.