Abstract

A generalized van Cittert–Zernike theorem for the cross-spectral density matrix of quasi-homogeneous planar electromagnetic sources is introduced. We present theoretical examples of using this theorem to generate fields with interesting polarization and spatial coherence properties by choosing the appropriate spectral density distribution of the source. We found that under certain conditions, a quasi-homogeneous, polarized source may produce a beam in the far field that is unpolarized in the typical one-point sense but polarized in the two-point, mutual polarization sense.

© 2012 Optical Society of America