High speed single pixel imaging using a microLED-on-CMOS light projector.

Achieving high frame-rate operation in single pixel imaging schemes normally demands significant compromises in the flexibility of the imaging system, requiring either complex optical setups or a hardware-limited pattern mask set. Here, we demonstrate a single pixel imaging capability with pattern frame-rates approaching 400 kfps with a recently developed microLED light projector and an otherwise simple optical setup. The microLED array has individually addressable pixels and can operate significantly faster than digital micromirror devices, allowing flexibility with regards to the pattern masks employed for imaging even at the fastest frame-rates.

Optical orbital angular momentum analogy to the Stern-Gerlach experiment.

Symmetry breaking has been shown to reveal interesting phenomena in physical systems. A notable example is the fundamental work of Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach [Stern and Zerlach, Z. Physik9, 349 (1922)10.

Single-frame transmission and phase imaging using off-axis holography with undetected photons.

Imaging with undetected photons relies upon nonlinear interferometry to extract the spatial image from an infrared probe beam and reveal it in the interference pattern of an easier-to-detect visible beam. Typically, the transmission and phase images are extracted using phase-shifting techniques and combining interferograms from multiple frames. Here we show that off-axis digital holography enables reconstruction of both transmission and phase images at the infrared wavelength from a single interferogram, and hence a single frame, recorded in the visible.

Photon-efficient optical tweezers via wavefront shaping.

Optical tweezers enable noncontact trapping of microscale objects using light. It is not known how tightly it is possible to three-dimensionally (3D) trap microparticles with a given photon budget. Reaching this elusive limit would enable maximally stiff particle trapping for precision measurements on the nanoscale and photon-efficient tweezing of light-sensitive objects.

A comparison between the measurement of quantum spatial correlations using qCMOS photon-number resolving and electron multiplying CCD camera technologies.

Cameras with single-photon sensitivities can be used to measure the spatial correlations between the photon-pairs that are produced by parametric down-conversion. Even when pumped by a single-mode laser, the signal and idler photons are typically distributed over several thousand spatial modes yet strongly correlated with each other in their position and anti-correlated in their transverse momentum. These spatial correlations enable applications in imaging, sensing, communication, and optical processing.

Robust real-time imaging through flexible multimode fibers.

Conventional endoscopes comprise a bundle of optical fibers, associating one fiber for each pixel in the image. In principle, this can be reduced to a single multimode optical fiber (MMF), the width of a human hair, with one fiber spatial-mode per image pixel. However, images transmitted through a MMF emerge as unrecognizable speckle patterns due to dispersion and coupling between the spatial modes of the fiber.

The propagation speed of optical speckle.

That the speed of light in vacuum is constant is a cornerstone of modern physics. However, recent experiments have shown that when the light field is confined in the transverse plane, the observed propagation speed of the light is reduced. This effect is a consequence of the transverse structure which reduces the component of wavevector of the light in the direction of propagation, thereby modifying both the phase and group velocity.

Near single-photon imaging in the shortwave infrared using homodyne detection.

Low-light imaging is challenging in regimes where low-noise detectors are not yet available. One such regime is the shortwave infrared where even the best multipixel detector arrays typically have a noise floor in excess of photons per pixel per frame. We present a homodyne imaging system capable of recovering both intensity and phase images of an object from a single frame despite an illumination intensity of ​ photon per pixel.

Time-of-flight 3D imaging through multimode optical fibers.

Time-of-flight three-dimensional (3D) imaging has applications that range from industrial inspection to motion tracking. Depth is recovered by measuring the round-trip flight time of laser pulses, typically using collection optics of several centimeters in diameter. We demonstrate near–video-rate 3D imaging through multimode fibers with a total aperture of several hundred micrometers.

Noise rejection through an improved quantum illumination protocol.

Quantum illumination protocols can be implemented to improve imaging performance in the low photon flux regime even in the presence of both background light and sensor noise. However, the extent to which this noise can be rejected is limited by the rate of accidental correlations resulting from the detection of photon or noise events that are not quantum-correlated. Here we present an improved protocol that rejects up to [Formula: see text] of background light and sensor noise in the low photon flux regime, improving upon our previous results by an order of magnitude.

Compressed sensing in the far-field of the spatial light modulator in high noise conditions.

Single-pixel imaging techniques as an alternative to focal-plane detector arrays are being widely investigated. The interest in these single-pixel techniques is partly their compatibility with compressed sensing but also their applicability to spectral regions where focal planes arrays are simply not obtainable. Here, we show how a phased-array modulator source can be used to create Hadamard intensity patterns in the far-field, thereby enabling single-pixel imaging.

Optimising backscatter from multiple beam interference.

Optical sensing applications are usually reliant on the intensity of the measured signal. For remote sensing applications where a target is probed with a laser beam, the sensitivity will be limited by the amount of backscattered light returned from the target to the detector. We demonstrate a method of increasing the signal returned to the detector by illuminating the target with a number of independently controlled beams, where both the position and phase are optimised.

Single-pixel imaging 12 years on: a review.

Modern cameras typically use an array of millions of detector pixels to capture images. By contrast, single-pixel cameras use a sequence of mask patterns to filter the scene along with the corresponding measurements of the transmitted intensity which is recorded using a single-pixel detector. This review considers the development of single-pixel cameras from the seminal work of Duarte et al.

Dual-band single-pixel telescope.

Single-pixel imaging systems can obtain images from a wide range of wavelengths at low-cost compared to those using conventional multi-pixel, focal-plane array sensors, especially at wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. The ability to sense short-wave infrared radiation with single-pixel techniques extends imaging capability to adverse weather conditions and environments, such as fog, haze, or night time. In this work, we demonstrate a dual-band single-pixel telescope for imaging at both visible (VIS) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectral regions simultaneously under some of these outdoor weather conditions.

Developing a portable gas imaging camera using highly tunable active-illumination and computer vision.

We have developed a portable gas imaging camera for identifying methane leaks in real-time. The camera uses active illumination from distributed feedback InGaAs laser diodes tuned to the 1653 nm methane absorption band. An InGaAs focal plane sensor array images the active illumination.

Imaging through noise with quantum illumination.

The contrast of an image can be degraded by the presence of background light and sensor noise. To overcome this degradation, quantum illumination protocols have been theorized that exploit the spatial correlations between photon pairs. Here, we demonstrate the first full-field imaging system using quantum illumination by an enhanced detection protocol.

Single-pixel imaging using caustic patterns.

Single-pixel imaging uses a time-varying transmission mask placed in the illumination to achieve imaging without the use of detector arrays. While most research in this field uses sophisticated masks implemented using spatial light modulators, such methods are not available at all lengthscales and wavelengths of illumination. Here we show that alternatively a sequence of projected caustic intensity patterns can be used as the basis for the single-pixel imaging of objects.

Photon Bunching in a Rotating Reference Frame.

Although quantum physics is well understood in inertial reference frames (flat spacetime), a current challenge is the search for experimental evidence of nontrivial or unexpected behavior of quantum systems in noninertial frames. Here, we present a novel test of quantum mechanics in a noninertial reference frame: we consider Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference on a rotating platform and study the effect of uniform rotation on the distinguishability of the photons. Both theory and experiments show that the rotational motion induces a relative delay in the photon arrival times at the exit beam splitter and that this delay is observed as a shift in the position of the HOM dip.

Phase and amplitude imaging with quantum correlations through Fourier Ptychography.

Extracting as much information as possible about an object when probing with a limited number of photons is an important goal with applications from biology and security to metrology. Imaging with a few photons is a challenging task as the detector noise and stray light are then predominant, which precludes the use of conventional imaging methods. Quantum correlations between photon pairs has been exploited in a so called 'heralded imaging scheme' to eliminate this problem.

Imaging Bell-type nonlocal behavior.

The violation of a Bell inequality not only attests to the nonclassical nature of a system but also holds a very unique status within the quantum world. The amount by which the inequality is violated often provides a good benchmark on how a quantum protocol will perform. Acquiring images of such a fundamental quantum effect is a demonstration that images can capture and exploit the essence of the quantum world.

A light-in-flight single-pixel camera for use in the visible and short-wave infrared.

Single-pixel cameras reconstruct images from a stream of spatial projection measurements recorded with a single-element detector, which itself has no spatial resolution. This enables the creation of imaging systems that can take advantage of the ultra-fast response times of single-element detectors. Here we present a single-pixel camera with a temporal resolution of 200 ps in the visible and short-wave infrared wavelengths, used here to study the transit time of distinct spatial modes transmitted through few-mode and orbital angular momentum mode conserving optical fiber.

A compact acoustic spanner to rotate macroscopic objects.

Waves can carry both linear and angular momentum. When the wave is transverse (e.g.

Hybrid 3D ranging and velocity tracking system combining multi-view cameras and simple LiDAR.

Scanning our surroundings has become one of the key challenges in automation. Effective and efficient position, distance and velocity sensing is key to accurate decision making in automated applications from robotics to driverless cars. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has become a key tool in these 3D sensing applications, where the time-of-flight (TOF) of photons is used to recover distance information.

Spiniform phase-encoded metagratings entangling arbitrary rational-order orbital angular momentum.

Quantum entanglements between integer-order and fractional-order orbital angular momentums (OAMs) have been previously discussed. However, the entangled nature of arbitrary rational-order OAM has long been considered a myth due to the absence of an effective strategy for generating arbitrary rational-order OAM beams. Therefore, we report a single metadevice comprising a bilaterally symmetric grating with an aperture, creating optical beams with dynamically controllable OAM values that are continuously varying over a rational range.