Abstract

We present a generalized van Cittert-Zernike theorem for the cross-spectral density matrix of quasi-homogeneous planar electromagnetic sources. An example of the generation of a beam with interesting polarization and spatial coherence properties is discussed. This example was obtained 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

© 2012 Optical Society of America