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Goos-Hänchen shifts of partially coherent light fields
Li-Gang Wang1, Shi-Yao Zhu2, M Suhail Zubairy3
1Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering (IQSE) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4242, USA and Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China and The National Center for Mathematics and Physics, KACST, P.O. Box 6086, Riyadh 11442, Saudi Arabia.
Abstract:
The Goos-Hänchen (GH) shift refers to a lateral displacement (from the path expected from geometrical optics) along an interface in totally internal reflection. This phenomenon results from a coherence effect. In order to bring to light the role of coherence, the reflection of partially coherent light fields was investigated within the framework of the theory of coherence. A formal expression for the GH shifts of partially coherent light fields is obtained in terms of Mercer's expansion. It is shown that both the spatial coherence and the beam width have an important effect on the GH shift, especially near the critical angles (such as totally reflection angle). These results are important to observe the GH shifts of the beams with imperfect coherence, like x-ray and matter-wave beams.
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