Robustness of chaotic-light correlation imaging against turbulence

Abstract

We consider an imaging scheme, inspired by microscopy, in which both correlation imaging and first-order intensity imaging can be performed simultaneously, to investigate the effects of strong turbulence on the two different kinds of images. The comparison between direct and correlation imaging in the presence of strong turbulence unambiguously revealed an advantage of the latter. Remarkably, this advantage, quantified by analyzing the visibility of periodic sample patterns, is more striking when the presence of turbulence becomes the dominant factor in determining the image resolution.