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Ghost imaging with atoms

Nature volume 540, pages 100–103 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ghost imaging is a counter-intuitive phenomenon—first realized in quantum optics1,2—that enables the image of a two-dimensional object (mask) to be reconstructed using the spatio-temporal properties of a beam of particles with which it never interacts. Typically, two beams of correlated photons are used: one passes through the mask to a single-pixel (bucket) detector while the spatial profile of the other is measured by a high-resolution (multi-pixel) detector. The second beam never interacts with the mask. Neither detector can reconstruct the mask independently, but temporal cross-correlation between the two beams can be used to recover a ‘ghost’ image. Here we report the realization of ghost imaging using massive particles instead of photons. In our experiment, the two beams are formed by correlated pairs of ultracold, metastable helium atoms3, which originate from s-wave scattering of two colliding Bose–Einstein condensates4,5. We use higher-order Kapitza–Dirac scattering6,7,8 to generate a large number of correlated atom pairs, enabling the creation of a clear ghost image with submillimetre resolution. Future extensions of our technique could lead to the realization of ghost interference9, and enable tests of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen entanglement9 and Bell’s inequalities10 with atoms.

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Figure 1: Schematic of atomic ghost imaging.
Figure 2: Schematic of the experiment and resulting ghost image.
Figure 3: Cross-correlation function.
Figure 4: Resolution and visibility of the ghost image.

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Acknowledgements

A.G.T. acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council (ARC) through the Future Fellowship grant FT100100468 and the Discovery grant DP120101390. S.S.H. acknowledges the support of the ARC through the DECRA Fellowship DE150100315. We thank A. T. Friberg for discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    R. I. Khakimov, B. M. Henson, D. K. Shin, S. S. Hodgman, R. G. Dall, K. G. H. Baldwin & A. G. Truscott

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  1. R. I. Khakimov
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  2. B. M. Henson
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  3. D. K. Shin
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  7. A. G. Truscott
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Contributions

R.I.K., R.G.D. and A.G.T. conceived the experiment. R.I.K. performed the experiment and collected the data. All authors contributed to the conceptual formulation of the physics, the interpretation of the data and the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. G. Truscott.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Additional information

Reviewer Information Nature thanks M. A. Kasevich and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1 The object.

Microscope image of the mask used to create the ghost image. The region indicated by the dashed line forms the vertical bars shown in Fig. 4a, which was used to determine the ghost imaging resolution.

Extended Data Figure 2 Ghost image visibility.

Visibilities (dots) for images (insets) reconstructed from each individual halo with different average numbers of atoms . Diffraction orders producing the halos are labelled as ( + 1, ). The dashed curve is a guide to the eye. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean associated with the variances of the pixel values contributing to I and B.

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Khakimov, R., Henson, B., Shin, D. et al. Ghost imaging with atoms. Nature 540, 100–103 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20154

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