Computational temporal ghost imaging

Ghost imaging is a fascinating process in which light interacting with an object is recorded without resolution, but the shape of the object is nevertheless retrieved, thanks to quantum or classical correlations of this interacting light with either a computed or detected random signal. Recently, ghost imaging has been extended to a time object, by using several thousand copies of this periodic object. Here, we present a very simple device, inspired by computational ghost imaging, that allows the retrieval of a single nonreproducible, periodic, or nonperiodic, temporal signal. The reconstruction is performed by a single-shot spatially multiplexed measurement of the spatial intensity correlations between computer-generated random images and the images, modulated by a temporal signal, recorded, and summed on a chip CMOS camera used with no temporal resolution. Our device allows the reconstruction of either a single temporal signal with monochrome images or wavelength-multiplexed signals with color images.