On the use of superthermal light for imaging applications

Abstract

Ghost imaging and differential ghost imaging are well-known imaging techniques based on the use of both classical and quantum correlated states of light. The existence of correlations within bipartite states has been shown to be the main resource to implement ghost imaging and differential ghost imaging protocols. Here we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using two different kinds of superthermal states of light, which are more fluctuating than the typically employed thermal states, and thus originate correlations when divided at a beam splitter. To make a fair comparison, we calculate the contrast (C) and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the reconstructed image. While the larger values of C suggest the usefulness of these superthermal states, the values of SNR do not improve at increasing the intensity light fluctuations, but remain the same as those exhibited by thermal light.