Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 199, 127-138 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2011-01508-x

Regular Article

Intensity correlations of thermal light

Noise reduction measurements and new ghost imaging protocols

¹ Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of light, G.-Scharowsky Str. 1/Bau 24, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
² Dipartimento di Fisica e Matematica, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria and C.N.I.S.M., via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy
³ Data Storage Institute, Agency for Science Technology and Research, 117608 Singapore
⁴ Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, École Normale Supérieure, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6 et CNRS, UPMC Case 74, 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France
⁵ Department of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, 184-8795 Tokyo, Japan
⁶ Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and C.N.I.S.M., via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy
⁷ M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vorobievy Gory 1, Moscow 119991, Russia

^a e-mail: drquantum@hotmail.com

Received: 29 August 2011
Revised: 4 October 2011
Published online: 7 December 2011

Abstract

We demonstrate measurement of normalized Glauber’s intensity correlation functions of different orders using an array photodetector. As the light source, we use a laser beam scattered by a rotating ground-glass disc, which has statistics close to that of thermal light. We compare the measurements of the normalized correlation functions to that of the difference-intensity variance and show that they are in a certain sense complementary. The independence of the variance measurement on the number of temporal modes has been demonstrated for the first time. Different versions of high-order ghost imaging are also realized and characterized quantitatively.