Infrared quantum ghost imaging of living and undisturbed plants
Duncan P. Ryan, Kristina Meier, Kati Seitz, DAVID HANSON, Demosthenes Morales, D. M. Palmer, Buck Hanson, Peter M. Goodwin, Raymond Newell, Rebecca M. Holmes, David Thompson, James H. Werner
Abstract
Quantum ghost imaging (QGI) is a method that measures absorption at extremely low light intensities. Nondegenerate QGI probes a sample at one wavelength while forming an image with correlated photons at a different wavelength. This spectral separation alleviates the need for imaging detectors with high sensitivity in the near-infrared (NIR) region, thereby reducing the required illumination intensity. Using NCam, a single-photon detector, we demonstrated nondegenerate QGI with unprecedented sensitivity and contrast, obtaining images of living plants with less than 1% light transmission. The plants experienced 3aW/cm 2 of light during imaging, orders of magnitude below starlight. This realization of QGI expands the method to extremely low-light bioimaging and imaging of light-sensitive samples, where minimizing illumination intensity is crucial to prevent phototoxicity or sample degradation.