Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 56: Quanteninformation (Photonen und nichtklassisches Licht I)

Q 56.2: Talk

Friday, March 14, 2008, 11:15–11:30, 1A

Aperture imaging beyond the classical resolution limit by using incoherent photons — •Christoph Thiel¹, Thierry Bastin², Joachim von Zanthier¹, and Girish S. Agarwal³ — ¹Institut für Optik, Information und Photonik, Max- Planck-Forschungsgruppe, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany — ²Institut de Physique Nucléaire, Atomique et de Spectroscopie, Université de Liège, Belgium — ³Department of Physics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

We propose a technique to image arbitrary objects, e.g. an aperture, with sub-wavelength resolution using incoherent light. The method employs two photons spontaneously emitted by two atoms acting as the light source of our setup. The photons irradiate an aperture and are subsequently detected by two detectors in the far field region. We demonstrate that for certain detector positions r₁ and r₂ the second order correlation function G⁽²⁾(r₁, r₂) offers full information of the aperture, even if of size λ/2. The result corresponds thus to a 2-fold increase in spatial resolution in comparison with the classical intensity pattern. Unlike in the classical case, the two photons can take different but indistinguishable quantum paths. Our method makes explicit use of the second order interferences between these paths and it is thereby able to obtain a resolution beyond the classical limit.