Changing the speed of optical coherence in free space
Abstract
It is typically assumed that the fluctuations associated with a stationary broadband incoherent field propagate in free space at the speed of light in vacuum c. Here we introduce the concept of 'coherence group velocity', which -- in analogy to the group velocity of coherent pulses -- is the speed of the peak of the coherence function. We confirm experimentally that incorporating a judicious spatio-temporal spectral structure into a field allows tuning its coherence group velocity in free space. Utilizing light from a super-luminescent diode, we interferometrically measure the group delay encountered by the cross-correlation of a structured field synthesized from this source with the unstructured diode field. By tracking the propagation of this cross-correlation function, we measure coherence group velocities in the range from 12c to -6c.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1910.05612,
title = {Changing the speed of optical coherence in free space},
author = {Murat Yessenov and Ayman F. Abouraddy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.05612},
year = {2021}
}