Metrology of degree of coherence of circularly polarized optical waves

Abstract

The use of the method of field polarization modulation for defining the degree of coherence of circularly polarized waves is offered. The role of the reference circularly polarized wave in transforming the spatial distribution of polarization into the depth of visibility modulation of the resulting distribution, which can be metrologically estimated and analyzed, is demonstrated.

Correlation Optics, Coherence and Optical Singularities: Basic Concepts and Practical Applications

“…Recent advances in the areas of nanophotonics and near-field optics stipulate growing interest to the polarimetric structure of 3D light fields [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. An interesting fact is that any state of polarization of the 3D fields can be represented in terms of regular and irregular components [34][35][36].…”

“…An extension of this approach involves the assessment of purity for partially polarized fields in three dimensions [37] with separation of the circularly-and linearly-polarized contributions, which is proposed to be described via the coherency-matrix elements parameterized in terms of polarization ellipticity, regarding the intrinsic polarization properties of the field. The similar concepts appear to be fruitful for purposeful formation of complex optical fields with inhomogeneous 3D polarization structures [38,39]. Alternative highly efficient instruments for characterization of the partially-coherent 3D optical fields involve fruitful concepts of the polarimetric dimension, polarimetric purity and polarimetric regularity [35,36,49].…”

“…The Poincaré sphere representation is sufficient for fully coherent radiation. At the same time, approaches employing the Poincaré sphere can be used to reproduce the polarization states of a partially coherent field by estimating the degree of coherence of the orthogonal field components [82][83][84][85].…”