Coherence characterization of narrow-linewidth beam by C-OFDR based Rayleigh speckle analysis

A novel method for characterizing the amplitude of a coherence function with respect to a delay between two optical waves is proposed and demonstrated by using a distributional Rayleigh speckle analysis based on C-OFDR. This technique allows us to estimate both the coherence time of the laser and that of the spectral profiles from the measured amplitude of the coherence function, if the symmetry of the spectrum can be assumed. The spectral width obtained in the experiment agrees roughly with that obtained using a delayed self-heterodyne method.