Partially coherent light provides attractive benefits for different applications in microscopy, astronomy, telecommunications, optical lithography, etc. However, design and generation of partially coherent beams with desirable properties is challenging. Moreover, the experimental characterization of the spatial coherence is a difficult problem involving second-order statistics represented by four-dimensional functions that cannot be directly measured and analyzed. We discuss the techniques for design and generation of partially coherent structurally stable beams and the recently developed phase-space tomography methods supported by simple experimental setups for practical quantitative characterization of partially coherent light spatial structure, including its local coherence properties.

Date Published: 13 March 2015
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 9369, Photonic Instrumentation Engineering II, 93690K (13 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2083773

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9369:
Photonic Instrumentation Engineering II
Yakov G. Soskind; Craig Olson, Editor(s)