Abstract: The light field is periodic in the plane which is perpendicular with the direction of its propagation, and the diffraction field has a point-to-point correlation. On this basis，we present a high-order periodic diffraction correlation imaging scheme for reflective objects and discuss the performance of the proposed correlation imaging scheme by theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. The results show that the visibility of the periodic diffraction correlation imaging is enhanced while the signal-to-noise ratio is decreased with the larger order when the pinhole numbers of the pinhole array are determined. The visibility and signal-to-noise ratio are decreased with the pinhole number when the order numbers are determined. Compared with the traditonal thermal correlation imaging , the scheme we presented has advantages of size of the light source being controlled and the equipments of the experiment being simplified. Hence, it provides a reference method for the realization of correlation imaging.

Key words: quantum optics, thermal correlation imaging, periodic diffraction effect, reflective object, high-order