Temporal ghost imaging of a time object, dispersion cancelation, and nonlocal time lens with bi-photon state

We present a theory of temporal diffraction, temporal imaging of a bi-photon state, and temporal ghost imaging of a time object. By applying factional Fourier transform to the bi-photon wave packet propagating in space, we could obtain a theory that shows the physical origin of dispersion cancelation, temporal imaging, nonlocal effects of time lenses, and temporal ghost imaging. We introduce the temporal diffraction distance for bi-photon wave packet and show that the bi-photon wave packet behaves like a single wave packet whose temporal diffraction distance is determined by the coherent sum of the temporal diffraction distances for the signal and the idler beams. This property yields the well known dispersion cancelation, the recovery of original bi-photon wave packet in temporal imaging, and the nonlocal combination of two time lenses placed in different arms. We also propose a method for ghost imaging of an arbitrary time object. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.