Abstract

It has been known for some time that the degree of polarization of a light beam may change on propagation, even in free space. In this Letter we derive sufficiency conditions for the degree of polarization of a beam generated by a uniformly polarized stochastic, electromagnetic source of a wide class to be the same throughout the far zone and in the source plane.

© 2007 Optical Society of America

Invariance and noninvariance of the spectra of stochastic electromagnetic beams on propogation

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