  For conventional imaging, the imaging resolution limit is given by the
Rayleigh criterion. Exploiting the prior knowledge of imaging object's sparsity
and fixed optical system, imaging beyond the conventional Rayleigh limit, which
is backed up by numerical simulation and experiments, is achieved by
illuminating the object with single-shot thermal light and detecting the
object's information at the imaging plane with some sparse-array single-pixel
detectors. The quality of sub-Rayleigh imaging with sparse detection is also
shown to be related to the effective number of single-pixel detectors and the
detection signal-to-noise ratio at the imaging plane.
