Super-Resolution Imaging by Computationally Fusing Quantum and Classical Optical Information

A high-speed super-resolution computational imaging technique is introduced on the basis of classical and quantum correlation functions obtained from photon counts collected from quantum emitters illuminated by spatiotemporally structured illumination. The structured illumination is delocalized—allowing the selective excitation of separate groups of emitters as the modulation of the illumination light advances. A recorded set of photon counts contains rich quantum and classical information. By processing photon counts, multiple orders of Glauber correlation functions are extracted. Combinations of the normalized Glauber correlation functions convert photon counts into signals of increasing order that contain increasing spatial frequency information. However, the amount of information above the noise floor drops at higher correlation orders, causing a loss of accessible information in the finer spatial frequency content that is contained in the higher-order signals. We demonstrate an efficient and robust computational imaging algorithm to fuse the spatial frequencies from the low-spatial-frequency range that is available in the classical information with the spatial frequency content in the quantum signals. Because of the overlap of low spatial frequency information, the higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) information concentrated in the low spatial frequencies stabilizes the lower SNR at higher spatial frequencies in the higher-order quantum signals. Robust performance of this joint fusion of classical and quantum computational single-pixel imaging is demonstrated with marked increases in spatial frequency content, leading to super-resolution imaging, along with much better mean squared errors in the reconstructed images. © 2022 Randy Bartels et al.