Robustness of chaotic-light correlation imaging against turbulence

TL;DR

This paper compares correlation and direct imaging under strong turbulence, demonstrating that correlation imaging maintains higher visibility and resolution, showing its robustness against turbulence effects.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopy-inspired imaging scheme to compare the robustness of correlation and intensity imaging in turbulent conditions, highlighting the superior performance of correlation imaging.

Findings

Correlation imaging outperforms direct imaging in turbulence.

Visibility of sample patterns is higher with correlation imaging.

Correlation imaging's advantage increases with turbulence strength.

Abstract

We consider an imaging scheme, inspired by microscopy, in which both correlation imaging and first-order intensity imaging can be performed simultaneously, to investigate the effects of strong turbulence on the two different kinds of images. The comparison between direct and correlation imaging in the presence of strong turbulence unambiguously revealed an advantage of the latter. Remarkably, this advantage, quantified by analyzing the visibility of periodic sample patterns, is more striking when the presence of turbulence becomes the dominant factor in determining the image resolution.