Optical Rankine Vortex
arXiv:0707.0037
Abstract
Rankine vortex charateristics of a partially coherent optical vortex are explored using classical and physical optics. Unlike a perfectly coherent vortex mode, the circulation is not quantized. Excess circulation is predicted owing to the wave nature of the composite vortex fields. Based on these findings we propose a vortex stellar interferometer.
10 pages, 5 figures,