Pulse-quality metric for nonstationary partially coherent fields

Area of Science:

• Physics
• Optics
• Photonics

Background:

• The beam quality factor M² is crucial for characterizing laser beams.
• Extending this metric to pulsed, nonstationary, and partially coherent fields is essential for advanced optical systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• Generalize the pulse-quality metric P² to arbitrary states of coherence for pulsed random fields.
• Derive and validate the generalized P² for specific stochastic sources.

Main Methods:

• Derivation of a general P² relation for pulsed random fields.
• Specialization of the P² relation to coherent and Schell-model pulsed beams.
• Monte Carlo simulations to compare theoretical P² with computed values for stochastic sources.

Main Results:

• A generalized P² relation is derived for pulsed random fields.
• The P² metric is successfully applied to cosine Gaussian-correlated Schell-model and nonuniformly correlated pulsed beams.
• Excellent agreement between theoretical and simulated P² values validates the analysis.

Conclusions:

• The generalized P² metric effectively characterizes the quality of pulsed random fields across various coherence states.
• The derived P² analysis provides a robust tool for evaluating pulsed beam quality in optical systems.