Experimental demonstration of ghost imaging with an electromagnetic Gaussian Schell-model beam.

Abstract

Recently, there has been a controversy about the dependence of the visibility of the ghost image on the degree of polarization (DOP) of a stochastic electromagnetic beam because of different definitions of the visibility. In this paper, we revisit ghost imaging with an electromagnetic Gaussian Schell-model (EGSM) beam. Through numerical examples based on the conventional definition of the visibility, we find that the visibility of the ghost image indeed increases or decreases with the increase of the DOP the beam source under certain conditions. We solve the controversy between literatures and the present paper through analyzing the r.m.s. widths of auto-correlation functions of the x component of the field and of the y component of the field. Furthermore, we carry out experimental demonstration of ghost imaging with an EGSM beam. Our experimental results verify the theoretical predictions.