Spatial coherence properties of azimuthally polarized laser modes

    Authors

    D. P. Brown; A. K. Spilman; T. G. Brown; R. Borghi; S. N. Volkov;E. Wolf

    Comments

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    Abstract

    Understanding of coherence properties of optical fields is of basic importance both in classical optics and in quantum physics. Coherence properties of electromagnetic laser modes are only now beginning to be explored and have not yet been tested experimentally, except in the simplest cases. In this paper, we first study theoretically the coherence properties of azimuthally polarized laser modes and we clarify the distinction between coherence and correlations in stochastic electromagnetic fields, a distinction which has up to now not been fully understood and has, in fact, been a subject of controversy. Our analysis clearly illustrates the distinction between these two concepts. After elucidating theoretically the coherence properties of radially polarized laser modes, we describe an experimental study of their properties, made by the use of a recently introduced reversed-wavefront Young's interferometer. A good agreement between theory and experiment has been found. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Optics Communications

    Volume

    281

    Issue/Number

    21

    Publication Date

    1-1-2008

    Document Type

    Article

    First Page

    5287

    Last Page

    5290

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000260086400001

    ISSN

    0030-4018

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