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Quasi-stationary plane-wave optical pulses and the van Cittert-Zernike theorem in time
Hanna Lajunen1, Ari T Friberg, Petter Ostlund
1Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), School of Information and Communication Technology, Kista, Sweden. hanna.lajunen@joensuu.fi
Abstract:
We study the properties of quasi-stationary, partially coherent, plane-wave optical pulses in the space-time and space-frequency domains. A generalized van Cittert-Zernike theorem in time is derived to describe the propagation of the coherence function of quasi-stationary pulses. The theory is applied to rectangular pulses chopped from a stationary light source, and the evolution characteristics of such pulse trains with different states of coherence are discussed and illustrated with numerical examples.
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