Reconstruction of optical-source profiles from fixed-baseline two-pinhole spectral measurements

Source masking by a cosine amplitude grating is shown to render possible the reconstruction of the intensity distribution associated with globally incoherent optical sources from spectral measurements performed with a Young's two-pinhole fixed-baseline interferometer. The effect of the mask is to map the low spatial frequencies of the source intensity onto accessible optical frequencies. The permissible parameter regimes are studied, and the feasibility of the technique is demonstrated by numerical simulations.