Discord-Enabled Teleportation-Inspired Optical Imaging at a Distance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a classical optical imaging method inspired by quantum teleportation, using pseudo-thermal light and sum-frequency generation to achieve non-local imaging without entanglement.

Contribution

It demonstrates a teleportation-inspired imaging technique utilizing classical correlations and quantum discord, expanding quantum-inspired methods to classical optics.

Findings

Successful imaging of characters, diagrams, and orbital angular momentum modes.

Better coherence leads to lower image contrast.

Quantum discord enables non-local imaging without entanglement.

Abstract

In quantum teleportation, a pair of entangled photons are prerequisite to serve as the quantum channel for quantum state transfer distantly. Here, we report a new strategy of quantum-teleportation-inspired classical optical imaging, which also works non-locally at a distance; however, only a classically correlated light source is used instead of entanglement. In our experiment, we explore the pseudo-thermal light source to offer the teleportation-like channel and employ the sum-frequency generation to perform the Bell-like state measurement. We successfully demonstrate the teleportation-inspired optical imaging of simple characters, Taiji diagram, and the superposition of orbital angular momentum modes. Moreover, we experimentally observe that a better coherence of pseudo-thermal light will result in a lower contrast of the formed images, and thus revealing that non-zero quantum discord offered by pseudo-thermal light, regardless of zero entanglement, plays the pivotal role in sustaining the teleportation-like channel for imaging at a distance.