We develop a concept of metasurface-assisted ghost imaging for nonlocal discrimination between a set of polarization objects. The specially designed metasurfaces are incorporated in the imaging system to perform parallel state transformations in general elliptical bases of quantum-entangled or classically correlated photons. Then, only four or fewer correlation measurements between multiple metasurface outputs and a simple polarization-insensitive bucket detector after the object can allow for the identification of fully or partially transparent polarization elements and their arbitrary orientation angles. The approach can find applications for real-time and low-light imaging across diverse spectral regions in dynamic environments.

• Received 6 July 2021
• Revised 22 November 2021
• Accepted 30 November 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.16.064032