Ghost imaging utilizing experimentally acquired degree of linear polarization with no prior information.

Abstract

Ghost imaging is developed to obtain images of the objects based on intensity correlation of illumination patterns. However, it can be hard to distinguish between objects if the difference between their reflectivities is small. Considering the difference between degrees of polarization in the reflected light from different points, we put forward a method to retrieve distribution of the degree of linear polarization, and obtain high quality image of the objects. With the illumination source being linearly polarized, two orthogonal polarization components of the reflected intensities are measured, from which we can get the distribution of the degree of linear polarization. Furthermore, for the case that the degree of linear polarization can be approximately described with two different values within the field of view, we demonstrate retrieving of the image with high contrast. Our method can be widely applied in different situations, such as extracting the image of target hidden behind disguise or getting higher contrast in bio-imaging.