Phase distribution reconstruction in reflective ghost diffraction

The commonly used ghost imaging technique can be used to obtain the reflectivity of a reflective object, but leaves the phase distribution of the reflection coefficient not retrieved. To reconstruct the phase of a reflective object, we propose a kind of generalized reflective ghost diffraction (GD) scheme, in which the reference screens are inserted into the reference path of the standard reflective GD setup. With the help of the three-step phase-shifting method, we provide an algorithm to reconstruct the phase distribution of the reflective object. The applicability of this theoretical proposal is demonstrated via numerical simulations. The effects of the transverse coherence of the Gaussian Schell-model source on the phase reconstruction are also discussed. (paper)