Determination of temporal correlation properties of electromagnetic optical fields

摘要

We report both theoretically and experimentally a method for the measurement of the temporal electromagnetic degree of coherence for stationary light fields obeying Gaussian statistics having any degree of polarization using intensity-interferometry. We also demonstrate that the temporal degree of cross-polarization, which provides a measure of correlations between the field components at two time points, and degree of polarization can also be determined from intensity correlations. For this purpose, a narrowband multi-mode laser and a broadband filtered white-light LED having different temporal coherence properties are used. We also point out that in order to determine the visibilities, which only involve the measurement of magnitudes (no phase), the intensity correlation based method may provide benefits such as minimal alignment, and robustness against misalignment.