English

Frequency-domain optical coherence tomography with undetected mid-infrared photons

Optics 2020-06-16 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

Mid-infrared light scatters much less than shorter wavelengths, allowing greatly enhanced penetration depths for optical imaging techniques such as optical coherence tomography (OCT). However, both detection and broadband sources in the mid-IR are technologically challenging. Interfering entangled photons in a nonlinear interferometer enables sensing with undetected photons making mid-IR sources and detectors obsolete. Here we implement mid-infrared frequency-domain OCT based on ultra-broadband entangled photon pairs. We demonstrate 10 μ{\mu}m axial and 20 μ{\mu}m lateral resolution 2D and 3D imaging of strongly scattering ceramic and paint samples. Together with 10610^6 times less noise scaled for the same amount of probe light and also vastly reduced footprint and technical complexity this technique can outperform conventional approaches with classical mid-IR light.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.07400,
  title  = {Frequency-domain optical coherence tomography with undetected mid-infrared photons},
  author = {Aron Vanselow and Paul Kaufmann and Ivan Zorin and Bettina Heise and Helen M. Chrzanowski and Sven Ramelow},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.07400},
  year   = {2020}
}