We discuss the geometrical optics of correlated imaging for two kinds of spatial correlations corresponding, respectively, to a classical thermal light source and a quantum two-photon entangled source. Due to the different features in the second-order spatial correlation, the two sources obey different imaging equations. The quantum entangled source behaves as a mirror, whereas the classical thermal source looks like a phase-conjugate mirror in the correlated imaging.

We report the experimental observation of classical subwavelength double slit interference with a pseudothermal light source. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical simulation using the second order correlation function for the thermal light.

The arbitrary Nth-order intensity correlation measurement with thermal light is both theoretically and experimentally investigated. In a double-slit interference scheme with thermal light, we compare the results for higher- and lower-order intensity correlation and demonstrate that the visibility of the interference pattern can be dramatically enhanced while the resolution can also be improved when the order N becomes larger. The experimental results are in agreement with our theoretical analysis.

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A wavelength-multiplexing ghost-imaging (WMGI) technique is performed in order to improve long data acquisition time in conventional ghost imaging. In WMGI, a source has more than two colored light beams which are independently modulated and projected onto an object at the same time. Then the reflected light from the object is recorded with wavelength-selected detectors. We analyze the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of the reconstructed images of each single-wavelength ghost imaging and their superposition and demonstrate the validity of the WMGI technique.

We report an optical interference experiment which seems to contradict our common knowledge, in that the formation of the interference pattern originates from a spatially incoherent light source. Our experimental scheme is very similar to Gabor’s original proposal of holography [ Nature (London) 161, 777 (1948)], except that an incoherent source replaces the coherent one. Though an instantaneous interference pattern between an object wave and reference wave fluctuates irregularly, a well-defined pattern appears in the statistical average, in accord with a hologram in the coherent light case.