Intensity correlations of thermal light: Noise reduction measurements and new ghost imaging protocols

We demonstrate measurement of normalized Glauber’s intensity correlation functions of different orders using an array photodetector. As the light source, we use a laser beam scattered by a rotating ground glass disc, which has statistics close to that of thermal light. We compare the measurements of the normalized correlation functions to that of the difference-intensity variance and show that they are in a certain sense complementary. The independence of the variance measurement on the number of temporal modes has been demonstrated for the first time. Different versions of high-order ghost imaging are also realized and characterized quantitatively.