High-order ghost imaging using non-Rayleigh speckle sources

It has been recently demonstrated in experiments how to create non-Rayleigh speckle fields through the use of a phase-only spatial light modulator. These non-Rayleigh speckle fields possess high-order correlations which could play important roles in correlation-based optical imaging methods such as thermal ghost imaging, in which case the Gaussian moment theorem is no longer applicable. Through numerical simulations we investigated at how non-Rayleigh and Rayleigh speckle fields affect the resolution and visibility for high-order thermal ghost imaging. The results show regardless of the speckle field used better resolution is achieved with the use of a higher-order and that sub-Rayleigh speckle fields lead to the best resolution regardless of ghost order. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America