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• Vol. 3, Issue 4, 045001 (2021)
Pengpeng Ding1、†, Yunhua Yao1, Dalong Qi1、*, Chengshuai Yang1, Fengyan Cao1, Yilin He1, Jiali Yao1, Chengzhi Jin1, Zhengqi Huang1, Li Deng1, Lianzhong Deng1, Tianqing Jia1, Jinyang Liang2, Zhenrong Sun1, and Shian Zhang1、3、*
Author Affiliations
• 1East China Normal University, School of Physics and Electronic Science, State Key Laboratory of Precision Spectroscopy, Shanghai, China
• 2Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications, Laboratory of Applied Computational Imaging, Varennes, Québec, Canada
• 3Shanxi University, Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Taiyuan, China
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Abstract

In ultrafast optical imaging, it is critical to obtain the spatial structure, temporal evolution, and spectral composition of the object with snapshots in order to better observe and understand unrepeatable or irreversible dynamic scenes. However, so far, there are no ultrafast optical imaging techniques that can simultaneously capture the spatial–temporal–spectral five-dimensional (5D) information of dynamic scenes. To break the limitation of the existing techniques in imaging dimensions, we develop a spectral-volumetric compressed ultrafast photography (SV-CUP) technique. In our SV-CUP, the spatial resolutions in the x, y and z directions are, respectively, 0.39, 0.35, and 3 mm with an 8.8 mm × 6.3 mm field of view, the temporal frame interval is 2 ps, and the spectral frame interval is 1.72 nm. To demonstrate the excellent performance of our SV-CUP in spatial–temporal–spectral 5D imaging, we successfully measure the spectrally resolved photoluminescent dynamics of a 3D mannequin coated with CdSe quantum dots. Our SV-CUP brings unprecedented detection capabilities to dynamic scenes, which has important application prospects in fundamental research and applied science.

1 Introduction

Acquiring the spatial $(x,y,z)$, temporal ($t$), and spectral ($λ$) information of an object is very important in natural science exploration. Multi-dimensional optical imaging, as a visualization method, can provide information covering the space, time, and spectrum.1 So far, multi-dimensional optical imaging has played an irreplaceable role in exploring the unknown world and decrypting natural mysteries such as light–matter interactions,2 light scattering in tissues,3 and physical or biochemical reactions.46 Scanning multi-dimensional optical imaging had to be sequentially operated, and thus its imaging speed was restricted to hundreds of frames per second (fps) due to the limited data readout speed and on-chip storage of charge-coupled devices or complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOSs).7 Therefore, snapshot multi-dimensional optical imaging has aroused great interest among researchers because of its ability to capture dynamic scenes with imaging speeds of up to a billion or a trillion fps, corresponding to the temporal frame intervals at the picosecond or femtosecond scales. To capture as much spatial–temporal–spectral $(x,y,z,t,λ)$ information as possible, various multi-dimensional optical imaging techniques have been developed. For example, the spectral imaging techniques, including coded aperture snapshot spectral imaging,8 adaptive optics spectral-domain optical coherence tomography,9 volume holographic spatial–spectral imaging,10 and compressive spectral time-of-flight (ToF) imaging,11 could capture the spatial–spectral four-dimensional (4D) $(x,y,z,λ)$ information, but there was no temporal information. However, the ultrafast imaging techniques, such as compressed ultrafast photography (CUP),1215 sequentially timed all-optical mapping photography,16 and single-shot femtosecond time-resolved optical polarimetry,17 could record the spatial–temporal three-dimensional (3D) $(x,y,t)$ information, while both the depth (i.e., $z$) and spectral information were missing. Some improved techniques have been developed to further extend the imaging dimensions of CUP, such as hyperspectrally compressed ultrafast photography (HCUP)18 and compressed ultrafast spectral photography,19 which could capture the spatial–temporal–spectral (4D) $(x,y,t,λ)$ information, but they still lacked the depth information. Recently, a stereo-polarimetric compressed ultrafast photography method was able to detect spatial–temporal-polarization five-dimensional (5D) $(x,y,z,t,ψ)$ information.20 Unfortunately, the spectral information could not be detected. Consequently, there are no imaging optical techniques that can capture the whole spatial–temporal–spectral 5D $(x,y,z,t,λ)$ information in a single exposure, until now.

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Pengpeng Ding, Yunhua Yao, Dalong Qi, Chengshuai Yang, Fengyan Cao, Yilin He, Jiali Yao, Chengzhi Jin, Zhengqi Huang, Li Deng, Lianzhong Deng, Tianqing Jia, Jinyang Liang, Zhenrong Sun, Shian Zhang. Single-shot spectral-volumetric compressed ultrafast photography[J]. Advanced Photonics, 2021, 3(4): 045001