English

Statistics of narrow-band partially polarized light

Optics 2017-09-13 v1

Abstract

A complete single-point statistical description of a narrow-band partially polarized optical field is developed in terms of the 2-D Period-Averaged Probability Density Function (PA-PDF) of the electrical field vector. This statistic can be measured using the coherent (heterodyne) detection. PA-PDF carries more information about the partially-polarized light than the traditional Stokes vector. For a simple Gaussian partially polarized field the PA-PDF depends on 13 real parameters in contrast to the four parameters of the Stokes vector or coherence tensor

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1702.00002,
  title  = {Statistics of narrow-band partially polarized light},
  author = {Mikhail Charnotskii},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.00002},
  year   = {2017}
}