Spatial Interference: From Coherent To Incoherent

Abstract

It is well known that direct observation of interference and diffraction pattern in the intensity distribution requires a spatially coherent source. Optical waves emitted from portions beyond the coherence area possess statistically independent phases, and will degrade the interference pattern. In this paper we show an optical interference experiment, which seems contrary to our common knowledge, that the formation of the interference pattern is related to a spatially incoherent light source. Our experimental scheme is very similar to Gabor's original proposal of holography[1], just with an incoherent source replacing the coherent one. In the statistical ensemble of the incoherent source, each sample field produces a sample interference pattern between object wave and reference wave. These patterns completely differ from each other due to the fluctuation of the source field distribution. Surprisingly, the sum of a great number of sample patterns exhibits explicitly an interference pattern, which contains all the information of the object and is equivalent to a hologram in the coherent light case. In this sense our approach would be valuable in holography and other interference techniques for the case where coherent source is unavailable, such as x-ray and electron sources.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Experimental evidence of high-resolution ghost imaging and ghost diffraction with classical thermal light
• Coherent imaging with pseudo-thermal incoherent light
• Experimental Observation of Classical Sub-Wavelength Interference with Thermal-Like Light
• Two-photon interference with true thermal light
• Coherent imaging of a pure phase object with classical incoherent light
• Two-photon interference with thermal light

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Hanbury Brown and Twiss Interferometry with Twisted Light
• Experimental Observation of Quantum Holographic Imaging
• Phase Reversal Diffraction in incoherent light
• Complex Acquisition of the Fourier Transform Imaging of an Arbitrary Object
• Observation of Intensity-Intensity Correlation Speckle Patterns with Thermal Light
• Light under a matter field microscope