Synthesis and characterization of complex partially coherent beams

Abstract

Partially coherent light provides attractive benefits for different applications in microscopy, astronomy, telecommunications, optical lithography, etc. However, design and generation of partially coherent beams with desirable properties is challenging. Moreover, the experimental characterization of the spatial coherence is a difficult problem involving second-order statistics represented by four-dimensional functions that cannot be directly measured and analyzed. We discuss the techniques for design and generation of partially coherent structurally stable beams and the recently developed phase-space tomography methods supported by simple experimental setups for practical quantitative characterization of partially coherent light spatial structure, including its local coherence properties.