High-resolution ghost imaging experiments with cosh-Gaussian modulated incoherent sources

We experimentally demonstrate that ghost imaging (GI) quality can be significantly improved by modulating the incoherent Gaussian sources with hyperbolic cosine functions. In our experiments, a source with desired cosh-Gaussian intensity distribution can be generated by a programmable spatial light modulator, and is used in the GI setup to obtain high quality ghost images. The influences of the hyperbolic cosine parameter on the point-spread function and the GI quality have been investigated experimentally and interpreted theoretically. Our experimental results show that the resolution of ghost images can be obviously enhanced with cosh-Gaussian modulated incoherent sources. The kind of source-shaping technique proposed in this paper is a high-efficiency method to improve the GI quality and may be very useful for the GI applications. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America