Breaking Rayleigh's Criterion via Discernibility in High-Dimensional Light-Field Space with Snapshot Ghost Imaging

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a ghost imaging system can surpass Rayleigh's diffraction limit in high-dimensional light-field space by leveraging discernibility, with theoretical and experimental validation showing significant resolution improvements.

Contribution

The study introduces a method to enhance spatial resolution beyond Rayleigh's limit using high-dimensional light-field discernibility in ghost imaging systems.

Findings

Statistical spatial resolution exceeds classical Rayleigh limit.

High-dimensional light-field discernibility improves imaging resolution.

Experimental validation confirms theoretical predictions.

Abstract

By encoding the high-dimensional light-field imaging information into a detectable two-dimensional speckle plane, ghost imaging camera via sparsity constraints (GISC camera) can directly catch the high-dimensional light-field imaging information with only one snapshot. This makes it worth to revisit the spatial resolution limit of this optical imaging system. In this paper we show both theoretically and experimentally that, while the resolution in high-dimensional light-field space is still limited by diffraction, the statistical spatial resolution of GISC camera can be greatly improved comparing to classical Rayleigh's criterion by utilizing the discernibility in high-dimensional light-field space. The interaction between imaging resolution, degrees of freedom of light field, and degrees of freedom of objects in high-dimensional light-field space is also demonstrated.