Effects of phase conjugation on electromagnetic optical fields propagating in free space

Abstract

By using the property of phase conjugation, we demonstrate that the inverse of van Cittert–Zernike theorem holds for electromagnetic (EM) fields propagating in free space. This essentially implies that spatially incoherent partially polarized field distributions can be generated from spatially coherent partially polarized optical fields. We further utilize phase conjugation with a polarization rotator to swap the spatial coherence properties of orthogonal polarization components of EM fields on propagation, at least in free space. This study suggests that the method of phase conjugation could be potentially useful in arbitrarily manipulating spatial coherence properties of vector optical fields in the field plane.