Techniques for visualizing the propagation of a light ray
500 ps laser pulse propagation in air visualized by a single-photon detector arrays[1]A video demonstrating a superluminal light-in-flight observation captured with megapixel SPAD camera[2]
Light-in-flight imaging — a set of techniques to visualize propagation of light through different media.
History and techniques
Light was first captured in its flight by N. Abramson in 1978,[3] who used a holographic technique to record the wavefront of a pulse propagating and being scattered by a white-painted screen placed in its path. This high-speed recording technique allowed the dynamic observation of light phenomena like reflection, interference and focusing that are normally observed statically.[4][5] More recently, light-in-flight holography has been performed in a scattering medium rather than using a reflective screen.[6][7] Light can also be captured in motion in a scattering medium using a streak camera that has picosecondtemporal resolution, thus removing the need for interferometry and coherent illumination but requires additional hardware to raster scan the two-dimensional (2D) scene, which increases the acquisition time to hours.[8][9] A few other techniques possess the temporal resolution to observe light in motion as it illuminates a scene, such as photonic mixer devices based on modulated illumination, albeit with a temporal resolution limited to a few nanoseconds.[10] Alternatively, time-encoded amplified imaging can record images at the repetition rate of a laser by exploiting wavelength-encoded illumination of a scene and amplified detection through a dispersive fibre, albeit with 160 ns temporal and spatial resolution.[11] Recent studies based on computer tomography using data from multiple probe pulses enabled reconstruction of picosecond pulse propagation phenomena in condensed media.[12] In 2015 a method to visualize events evolving on picosecond time scales based on single-photon detector arrays has been demonstrated.[1]
^Abramson, Nils (1978-10-01). "Light-in-flight recording by holography". Optics Letters. 3 (4). The Optical Society: 121–123. doi:10.1364/ol.3.000121. ISSN0146-9592.
^Abramson, Nils (1983-01-15). "Light-in-flight recording: high-speed holographic motion pictures of ultrafast phenomena". Applied Optics. 22 (2). The Optical Society: 215–232. doi:10.1364/ao.22.000215. ISSN0003-6935.
^Abramson, Nils H.; Spears, Kenneth G. (1989-05-15). "Single pulse light-in-flight recording by holography". Applied Optics. 28 (10). The Optical Society: 1834–1841. doi:10.1364/ao.28.001834. ISSN0003-6935.
^Häusler, G.; Herrmann, J. M.; Kummer, R.; Lindner, M. W. (1996-07-15). "Observation of light propagation in volume scatterers with 10^11-fold slow motion". Optics Letters. 21 (14). The Optical Society: 1087–1089. doi:10.1364/ol.21.001087. ISSN0146-9592.
^Velten, A. et al. Femto-photography: capturing and visualizing the propagation of light. ACM Trans. Graph 32, 44:1–44:8 (2013).
^Velten, Andreas; Lawson, Everett; Bardagjy, Andrew; Bawendi, Moungi; Raskar, Ramesh (2011). Slow art with a trillion frames per second camera. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH. Vol. 44. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/2037715.2037730.
^Heide, F., Hullin, M. B., Gregson, J. & Heidrich, W. Low-budget transient imaging using photonic mixer devices. ACM Trans. Graph 32, 45:1–45:10 (2013).
^Goda, K.; Tsia, K. K.; Jalali, B. (2009). "Serial time-encoded amplified imaging for real-time observation of fast dynamic phenomena". Nature. 458 (7242). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 1145–1149. doi:10.1038/nature07980. ISSN0028-0836.
