Wigner functionals and ghost imaging.

Abstract

This dissertation discusses Wigner functionals and an application, namely ghost imaging. Wigner functionals aim to provide more accurate measurement results due to the inclusion of all the degrees of freedom of light. The main concepts discussed are spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), the evolution equation for light through the SPDC crystal, the probability distribution for the ghost image, conditional probability distribution, and the point spread function. The ghost imaging calculation is done for the rational thin crystal and extreme thin crystal limits. It is shown that the probability distribution produced is the same for the rational thin crystal and extreme thin crystal limits, and consequently, the point spread function, and conditional probability distributions are the same.