Ghost imaging and interference using a second-order interference source

Second-order coherence is one of the fundamental properties of light and exhibits rich and exotic characteristics in many light sources and optical systems. We systematically study the second-order interference (SOI) between laser (L) and spatially incoherent light (SI) and term this the L-SI SOI model. Using this model, we develop the L-SI SOI light source with tunable second-order coherence and employ it for ghost imaging and interference experiments. We experimentally observed the anti-correlation effect, positive and negative ghost imaging, and holographic ghost interference (that enables the reconstruction of an in-line hologram), and the mechanism of dark-pattern and hologram generation therein is well interpreted by both theory and an extended geometric optics model. The L-SI SOI light source is easy to prepare, and it has been proven here that the L-SI SOI source can be well applied to various typical experiments in correlation optics whilst exhibiting unique and intriguing properties, which may be further applied to holographic imaging, manipulation of light's second-order coherence, etc.