Can a conventional optical camera realize turbulence-free imaging?

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method enabling conventional optical cameras to produce turbulence-free images by leveraging sunlight intensity accumulation and photon fluctuation autocorrelation, without hardware modifications.

Contribution

It presents a practical approach that allows existing cameras, including mobile phones, to achieve turbulence-free imaging through software algorithms and photon autocorrelation techniques.

Findings

Turbulence-free images can be reconstructed using sunlight intensity autocorrelation.

The method achieves imaging speeds comparable to traditional optical imaging.

Almost all optical cameras can implement this technique without structural changes.

Abstract

Atmospheric turbulence is a serious problem for traditional optical imaging, especially for satellite and aircraft-to-ground imaging. Here, we report a novel and practical phenomenon in which turbulence-free images can be reconstructed on a conventional optical camera based on the accumulation of sunlight intensity and photon number fluctuation autocorrelation. Different from conventional ghost imaging, this method can obtain turbulence-free images, and its imaging speed is comparable to that of traditional optical imaging. Moreover, by adding photon number fluctuation autocorrelation algorithm software, almost all optical cameras, including mobile phone cameras, can realize this function without changing the structure of the original camera.