Abstract

Structured fields that are spatially completely coherent have been extensively studied in the context of long-distance optical communication, as the structure in the intensity profile of such fields is used for encoding information. This method of doing optical communication works very well in the absence of turbulence. However, in the presence of turbulence, the intensity structures of such fields start to degrade because of the complete spatial coherence of the field, and this structural degradation increases with the increase in turbulence strength. On the other hand, several theoretical studies have now shown that the structured fields that are spatially only partially coherent are less affected by turbulence. However, to the best of our knowledge, no such experimental demonstration has been reported until now. In this Letter, we experimentally demonstrate the structural robustness of partially coherent fields in the presence of turbulence, and we show that for a given turbulence strength, the structural robustness of a partially coherent field increases as the spatial coherence length of the field is decreased.

© 2020 Optical Society of America

Experimental synthesis of partially coherent sources

Rui Wang, Shijun Zhu, Yikai Chen, Hongkun Huang, Zhenhua Li, and Yangjian Cai
Opt. Lett. 45(7) 1874-1877 (2020)

Vector partially coherent beams with prescribed non-uniform correlation structure

Jiayi Yu, Xinlei Zhu, Shuqin Lin, Fei Wang, Greg Gbur, and Yangjian Cai
Opt. Lett. 45(13) 3824-3827 (2020)

Partially coherent Pearcey–Gauss beams

Xiaoyan Zhou, Zihao Pang, and Daomu Zhao
Opt. Lett. 45(19) 5496-5499 (2020)

Partially coherent Ince–Gaussian beams

Adad Yepiz, Benjamin Perez-Garcia, and Raul I. Hernandez-Aranda
Opt. Lett. 45(12) 3276-3279 (2020)

Turbulent coherent structures in a long cavity semiconductor laser near the lasing threshold

Uday Gowda, Amy Roche, Alexander Pimenov, Andrei G. Vladimirov, Svetlana Slepneva, Evgeny A. Viktorov, and Guillaume Huyet
Opt. Lett. 45(17) 4903-4906 (2020)