Breaking Rayleigh's Criterion via Discernibility in High-Dimensional Light-Field Space with Snapshot Ghost Imaging

Abstract: By encoding the high-dimensional light-field imaging information into a detectable two-dimensional speckle plane, ghost imaging camera via sparsity constraints (GISC camera) can directly catch the high-dimensional light-field imaging information with only one snapshot. This makes it worth to revisit the spatial resolution limit of this optical imaging system. In this paper we show both theoretically and experimentally that, while the resolution in high-dimensional light-field space is still limited by diffraction, the statistical spatial resolution of GISC camera can be greatly improved comparing to classical Rayleigh's criterion by utilizing the discernibility in high-dimensional light-field space. The interaction between imaging resolution, degrees of freedom of light field, and degrees of freedom of objects in high-dimensional light-field space is also demonstrated.