Wide-field Intensity Fluctuation Imaging

Abstract

The temporal intensity fluctuations contain important information about the light source and light-medium interaction and are typically characterized by the intensity autocorrelation function, g_2(τ). The measurement of g_2(τ) is a central topic in many optical sensing applications, ranging from stellar intensity interferometer in astrophysics, to fluorescence correlation spectroscopy in biomedical sciences and blood flow measurement with dynamic light scattering. Currently, g_2(τ) at a single point is readily accessible through high-frequency sampling of the intensity signal. However, two-dimensional wide-field measurement of g_2(τ) is still limited by camera frame rates. We propose and demonstrate a 2-pulse within-exposure modulation approach to break through the camera frame rate limit and obtain the quasi g_2(τ) map in wide field with cameras of only ordinary frame rates.