Classical ghost imaging with opto-electronic light sources: novel and highly incoherent concepts

In conventional imaging systems, the emitted light from a source interacts with an object and the intensity of the transmitted or reflected light is captured by a spatially resolving detector. In this thesis, a fundamentally different imaging principle has been studied, known as ghost imaging (GI). In contrast to conventional imaging, GI exploits the intensity correlations of light to form an image of an object. A ghost image is obtained by measuring the total intensity of the transmitted or reflected light of an illuminated object and the spatially resolved intensity of a highly-correlated reference beam which itself has never interacted with the object. The information of both intensities alone is not enough to form an image of the object. However, image reconstruction can be achieved by correlating the two intensities. Intriguingly, the spatial resolution of the ghost image is provided by the non-interacting reference beam. The work presented in this thesis joins into the continuous strive for making GI applicable to real-world sensing and imaging fields. The title: Classical ghost imaging with opto-electronic emitters, reflects one of the approaches to this objective. The second approach is what rather sets this thesis apart from other ongoing work on GI. Instead of utilizing state-of-the-art detection systems, novel GI configurations are developed

Classical ghost imaging with opto-electronic light sources: novel and highly incoherent concepts

In conventional imaging systems, the emitted light from a source interacts with an object and the intensity of the transmitted or reflected light is captured by a spatially resolving detector. In this thesis, a fundamentally different imaging principle has been studied, known as ghost imaging (GI). In contrast to conventional imaging, GI exploits the intensity correlations of light to form an image of an object. A ghost image is obtained by measuring the total intensity of the transmitted or reflected light of an illuminated object and the spatially resolved intensity of a highly-correlated reference beam which itself has never interacted with the object. The information of both intensities alone is not enough to form an image of the object. However, image reconstruction can be achieved by correlating the two intensities. Intriguingly, the spatial resolution of the ghost image is provided by the non-interacting reference beam. The work presented in this thesis joins into the continuous strive for making GI applicable to real-world sensing and imaging fields. The title: Classical ghost imaging with opto-electronic emitters, reflects one of the approaches to this objective. The second approach is what rather sets this thesis apart from other ongoing work on GI. Instead of utilizing state-of-the-art detection systems, novel GI configurations are developed

Ghost Spectroscopy with Classical Correlated Amplified Spontaneous Emission Photons Emitted by An Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier

We demonstrate wavelength-wavelength correlations of classical broad-band amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) photons emitted by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) in a wavelength regime around 1530 nm. We then apply these classical correlated photons in the framework of a real-world ghost spectroscopy experiment at a wavelength of 1533 nm to acetylene (C2H2) reproducing the characteristic absorption features of the C-H stretch and rotational bands. This proof-of-principle experiment confirms the generalization of an ASE source concept offering an attractive light source for classical ghost spectroscopy. It is expected that this will enable further disseminating ghost modality schemes by exploiting classical correlated photons towards applications in chemistry, physics and engineering