High frequency near-infrared up-conversion single-photon imaging based on the quantum compressed sensing

Abstract

Infrared up-conversion single-photon imaging has potential applications in remote sensing, biological imaging, and night vision imaging. However, the used photon counting technology has the problem of long integration time and sensitivity to background photons, which limit its application in real-world scenarios. In this paper, a novel passive up-conversion single-photon imaging method is proposed, in which the high frequency scintillation information of a near infrared target is captured by using the quantum compressed sensing. Through the frequency domain characteristic imaging of the infrared target, the imaging signal-to-noise ratio is significantly improved with strong background noise. In the experiment, the target with flicker frequency on the order of GHz is measured, and the signal-to-background ratio of the imaging reaches up to 1:100. Our proposal greatly improved the robustness of near-infrared up-conversion single-photon imaging and will promote its practical application.