Coherent imaging of a pure phase object with classical incoherent light

• Main Authors: Bache, M, Magatti, D, Gatti, A, Brambilla, E, Ferri, F, Lugiato, L. A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 06.04.2006
• Subjects: Physics - Quantum Physics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0604043

Phys. Rev. A 73, 053802 (2006) By using the ghost imaging technique, we experimentally demonstrate the reconstruction of the diffraction pattern of a {\em pure phase} object by using the classical correlation of incoherent thermal light split on a beam splitter. The results once again underline that entanglement is not a necessary feature of ghost imaging. The light we use is spatially highly incoherent with respect to the object ($\approx 2 \mu$m speckle size) and is produced by a pseudo-thermal source relying on the principle of near-field scattering. We show that in these conditions no information on the phase object can be retrieved by only measuring the light that passed through it, neither in a direct measurement nor in a Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) scheme. In general, we show a remarkable complementarity between ghost imaging and the HBT scheme when dealing with a phase object.