Spatial Coherence and Optical Beam Shifts
Optics
2012-11-26 v1
Abstract
A beam of light, reflected at a planar interface, does not follow perfectly the ray optics prediction. Diffractive corrections lead to beam shifts; either the reflected beam is displaced (spatial shift) and/or travels in a different direction (angular shift), as compared to geometric optics. How does the degree of spatial coherence of light influence these shifts? Theoretically, this has turned out to be a controversial issue. Here we resolve the controversy experimentally; we show that the degree of spatial coherence influences the angular beam shifts, while the spatial beam shifts are unaffected.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1207.4364,
title = {Spatial Coherence and Optical Beam Shifts},
author = {W. Löffler and Andrea Aiello and J. P. Woerdman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.4364},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
5 pages, 5 figures