Quantum aspects of imaging

Nonclassical spatial correlations are shown to arise in the cross section of transverse multimode optical beams as a consequence of nonlinear wave mixing phenomena. These correlations represent a macroscopic manifestation of quantum entanglement. As an applicative perspective, we discuss some quantum aspects of parametric amplification of images. A broadband parametric amplifier, enclosed in a telescopic system, is able to amplify and duplicate a faint coherent image. We show that the two output images are quantum twins of each other, in the sense that intensity fluctuations in corresponding pixels are correlated with a conditional variance well beyond the standard quantum limit. In a phase-sensitive amplification scheme we demonstrate an efficient transfer of information from the input image to each of the two output images.