Investigation of longitudinal spatial coherence for electromagnetic optical fields

Abstract

For light fields, the coherence in longitudinal direction is governed by both the frequency spectra and angular spectra they possess. In this work, we develop and report a theoretical formulation to demonstrate the effect of the angular spectra of electromagnetic light fields in quantifying their longitudinal spatial coherence. The experimental results obtained by measuring the electromagnetic longitudinal spatial coherence and degree of cross-polarization of uniformly polarized light fields for different angular spectra validate the theoretical findings.

Modulations in Stokes parameters due to electromagnetic longitudinal spatio-temporal coherence

“…A quantity, namely the EM degree of coherence (EMDOC) [41], expresses the combined effect of intensity and polarization modulations in the light beam, having a physical interpretation as a weighted sum of contrast modulations and visibilities of four usual Stokes parameters [29]. In the area of LSC, a recent study explored the EMDOC at two axial points [42], according to which the EM part is contained in the temporal factor, along with a multiplicative angular factor. The degree of polarization (DOP) signifies the possibility of polarization modulations when the beam interferes with itself [37].…”