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arXiv · 2007.09308

Superluminal Motion-Assisted 4-Dimensional Light-in-Flight Imaging

Kazuhiro Morimoto·Ming-Lo Wu·Andrei Ardelean·Edoardo Charbon
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Abstract

Advances in high speed imaging techniques have opened new possibilities for capturing ultrafast phenomena such as light propagation in air or through media. Capturing light-in-flight in 3-dimensional xyt-space has been reported based on various types of imaging systems, whereas reconstruction of light-in-flight information in the fourth dimension z has been a challenge. We demonstrate the first 4-dimensional light-in-flight imaging based on the observation of a superluminal motion captured by a new time-gated megapixel single-photon avalanche diode camera. A high resolution light-in-flight video is generated with no laser scanning, camera translation, interpolation, nor dark noise subtraction. A machine learning technique is applied to analyze the measured spatio-temporal data set. A theoretical formula is introduced to perform least-square regression, and extra-dimensional information is recovered without prior knowledge. The algorithm relies on the mathematical formulation equivalent to the superluminal motion in astrophysics, which is scaled by a factor of a quadrillionth. The reconstructed light-in-flight trajectory shows a good agreement with the actual geometry of the light path. Our approach could potentially provide novel functionalities to high speed imaging applications such as non-line-of-sight imaging and time-resolved optical tomography.

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Kazuhiro Morimoto, Ming-Lo Wu, Andrei Ardelean, Edoardo Charbon. 2020-07-18. Superluminal Motion-Assisted 4-Dimensional Light-in-Flight Imaging. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevx.11.011005

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