Application of superthermal light to imaging and quantum communication protocols

The development of quantum technologies based on optical platforms demands an adequate engineering of the employed quantum states of light. In this framework, we show that superthermal states generated by sending a coherent beam through a sequence of two diffusers in cascade represent good candidates for different applications. Here, we summarize some recent results achieved exploiting this kind of light and show that it can be used to realize a differential ghost-imaging scheme and to encode information in an underwater communication protocol based on mesoscopic twin-beam states and photon-number-resolving detectors. The good quality of the experimental results suggests further investigations on the possible application of this kind of light to different contexts.