Mid-infrared Fourier ptychographic upconversion imaging

The frequency upconversion technique offers an appealing approach for sensitive mid-infrared (MIR) imaging at room temperature. However, the spatial resolution of the upconversion imager has been notoriously restricted by the limited transverse section of the involved nonlinear crystal at the Fourier plane. Here, we implement a wide-field and high-resolution MIR upconversion imaging system based on elliptical pumping and Fourier ptychography. Specifically, an elliptical pump beam is engineered to accommodate the narrow aperture of chirped-poling crystals, thus facilitating the acquisition of high-spatial-frequency components in the lateral direction. Such an elliptical passband in the Fourier space is then discretely rotated to generate a sequence of upconversion images, which allows computational recovery of a high-resolution object image through a combination of synthetic aperture and phase retrieval operations. Consequently, an enhanced spatial resolution of 39 µm is achieved within a field of view about 25 mm, which corresponds to a space-bandwidth product of 3.2 × 10⁵, over tenfold larger than previously demonstrated values. Moreover, the MIR upconversion imager can operate under a low-light illumination of one photon/pulse/pixel. Therefore, the presented paradigm of nonlinear Fourier ptychography paves the way toward high-throughput infrared imaging with massive resolvable elements and single-photon sensitivity, which would stimulate a variety of applications such as industry inspection and biomedical diagnosis.