Single-frame transmission and phase imaging using off-axis holography with undetected photons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a single-frame off-axis holography method for infrared imaging with undetected photons, enabling rapid transmission and phase imaging without multiple frame acquisition, significantly reducing measurement time.

Contribution

It demonstrates that off-axis digital holography can reconstruct infrared transmission and phase images from a single visible interferogram, eliminating phase-shifting techniques.

Findings

Achieved infrared transmission imaging at 10 fps with SNR of 1.78

Recorded dynamic scenes at 33 fps in the infrared beam

Reduced measurement time by eliminating multiple frame requirements

Abstract

Imaging with undetected photons relies upon nonlinear interferometry to extract the spatial image from an infrared probe beam and reveal it in the interference pattern of an easier-to-detect visible beam. Typically, the transmission and phase images are extracted using phase-shifting techniques and combining interferograms from multiple frames. Here we show that off-axis digital holography enables reconstruction of both transmission and phase images at the infrared wavelength from a single interferogram, and hence a single frame, recorded in the visible. This eliminates the need for phase stepping and multiple acquisitions, thereby greatly reducing total measurement time for imaging with long acquisition times at low flux or enabling video-rate imaging at higher flux. With this single-frame acquisition technique, we are able to reconstruct transmission images of an object in the infrared beam with a signal-to-noise ratio of $1.78\,\pm\,0.06$ at 10 frames per second, and record a dynamic scene in the infrared beam at 33 frames per second.