Infrared quantum ghost imaging of living and undisturbed plants

Abstract

Quantum ghost imaging (QGI) is a method that measures absorption images at extremely low light intensities. Non-degenerate QGI probes a sample at one wavelength while forming an image with correlated photons at a different wavelength. This relieves spectral sensitivity requirements on detectors for near-infrared (NIR) imaging and, as a result, less illumination intensity is required. Using NCam, a novel single-photon detector, we demonstrate non-degenerate QGI with unprecedented sensitivity and contrast, obtaining images of living plants with less than 1% light transmission. Plants experience 3 aW/cm2 of light during imaging, orders of magnitude below starlight. This realization of QGI expands the method to extremely low light bioimaging applications and imaging of light sensitive samples.