Related papers: Spatial Interference: From Coherent To Incoherent
Interference between different photons occurs and has been observed under diverse experimental conditions. A necessary condition in order to obtain interference fringes is the existence of at least two possible paths and unknown which-path…
We revisit the mechanisms underlying the process of spectral broadening of incoherent optical waves propagating in nonlinear media on the basis of nonequilibrium thermodynamic considerations. A simple analysis reveals that a prerequisite…
Phase-sensitive coherent imaging exploits changes in the phases of backscattered light to observe tiny alterations of scattering structures or variations of the refractive index. But moving scatterers or a fluctuating refractive index…
The concept of spatial coherence is usually hard to be understood the first time that it is studied. We propose here a fully intuitive geometric description that does not contain mathematical difficulties and permits to understand how a…
By studying the fluorescence and optical properties of a three-level system, we propose a new point of view on the coherent control of these spectra. With the definite phase difference between the fields of the air band and dielectric band…
Residual wavefront errors in optical elements limit the performance of coronagraphs. To improve their efficiency, different types of devices have been proposed to correct or calibrate these errors. In this paper, we study one of these…
We analyze single particle coherence and interference in the presence of particle loss and derive an inequality that relates the preservation of coherence, the creation of superposition with the vacuum, and the degree of particle loss. We…
We measure the decoherence of a spatially separated atomic superposition due to spontaneous photon scattering. We observe a qualitative change in decoherence versus separation as the number of scattered photons increases, and verify…
Induced-coherence interferometry, first introduced in the Zou-Wang-Mandel (ZWM) setup, enables retrieval of object information from the interference pattern of light that never interacted with the object. This scheme relies on two…
The loss of contrast in double-slit electron-diffraction due to dephasing and decoherence processes is studied. It is shown that the spatial correlation function of diffraction patterns can be used to distinguish between dephasing and…
The interference of the directly emitted photoelectron wave and the wave scattered coherently by neighboring atoms gives holographic fringes in the photoelectron emission intensity $I(\hat{\bf R})$. In the electron emission holography…
Intensity interferometry is a well known method in astronomy. Recently, a related method called incoherent diffractive imaging (IDI) was proposed to apply intensity correlations of x-ray fluorescence radiation to determine the 3D…
It is well known that by modifying the wavefront in a certain manner, the light intensity can be turned into a certain shape. However, all known light modulation techniques allow for limited light modifications only: focusing within a…
In a recent experiment by Eichmann et al., polarization-sensitive measurements of the fluorescence from two four-level ions driven by a linearly polarized laser were made. Depending on the polarization chosen, different degrees of…
Optical-coherence tomography (OCT) is a technique that employs light in order to measure the internal structure of semi-transparent, e.g. biological, samples. It is based on the interference pattern of low-coherence light. Quantum-OCT…
While two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference visibility has become a standard metric for single-photon sources, many optical quantum technologies require the generation and manipulation of larger photonic states. To date, efficiency…
Novel optical phenomena, including electromagnetically induced transparency, slow light, superluminal light propagation, have recently been demonstrated in diverse physical implementations. These phenomena are challenging to realize in…
We study the effects of time uncertainty in the interaction of atoms with a standing light wave. We discuss its physical origin and the possibility to observe intrinsic decoherence effects by measuring the atomic momentum distribution.
The coherence time constitutes one of the most critical parameters that determines whether or not interference is observed in an experiment. For photons, it is traditionally determined by the effective spectral bandwidth of the photon. Here…
We present an algorithm for holographic shaping of partially coherent light, bridging the gap between traditional coherent and geometric optical approaches. The description of partially coherent light relies on a mode expansion formalism,…