Hyperspectral terahertz microscopy via nonlinear ghost imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel nonlinear ghost imaging technique for hyperspectral terahertz microscopy, overcoming limitations of traditional methods and enabling access to otherwise unrecoverable hyperspectral images.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental demonstration of Time-Resolved Nonlinear Ghost Imaging in the terahertz domain, combining nonlinear quadratic sparse generation with nonlinear detection.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated hyperspectral imaging in the terahertz range.

Overcame near-field imaging limitations caused by space-time coupling.

Provided access to hyperspectral images unreachable by standard fixed-time methods.

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate Time-Resolved Nonlinear Ghost Imaging and its ability to perform hyperspectral imaging in difficult-to-access wavelength regions, such as the Terahertz domain. We operate by combining nonlinear quadratic sparse generation and nonlinear detection in the Fourier plane. We demonstrate that traditional time-slice approaches are prone to essential limitations in near-field imaging due to space-time coupling, which is overcome by our technique. As a proof-of-concept of our implementation, we show that we can provide experimental access to hyperspectral images completely unrecoverable through standard fixed-time methods.