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Reports on Progress in Physics

Correlation-induced spectral changes

E. Wolf, Daniel F. V. James

Published Jun 1, 1996• 227 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper presents a review of research, both theoretical and experimental, concerning the influence of coherence properties of fluctuating light sources and of correlation properties of scattering media on the spectra of radiated and scattered fields. Much of this research followed a discovery made in 1986, that the spectrum of light may change on propagation, even in free space. More than 100 papers on this topic have been published to date and many of them are reviewed, or at least mentioned, in this article. After an introduction and a summary of some of the main mathematical results relating to second-order coherence theory of statistically stationary optical fields, spectral changes that may take place on superposing fields produced by two partially correlated sources are discussed. Spectral effects in fields produced by two-dimensional secondary sources and by three-dimensional primary sources are then considered. The section which follows describes spectral changes that may arise when polychromatic light is scattered on media whose physical properties vary randomly either in space and/or in time. A review is also presented of recent research, which has revealed that under certain circumstances the changes in the spectrum of light scattered on random media may imitate the Doppler effect, even though the source, the medium and the observer are all at rest with respect to one another. In the final section a brief review is given of a new emerging technique sometimes called spatial-coherence spectroscopy. It is based on the discovery that it is possible, under certain circumstances, to determine field correlations from spectral measurements.

DOI
10.1088/0034-4885/59/6/002

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This paper presents a review of research, both theoretical and experimental, concerning the influence of coherence properties of fluctuating light sources and of correlation properties of scattering media on the spectra of radiated and scattered fields. Much of this research followed a discovery made in 1986, that the spectrum of light may change on propagation, even in free space. More than 100 papers on this topic have been published to date and many of them are reviewed, or at least mentioned, in this article. After an introduction and a summary of some of the main mathematical results relating to second-order coherence theory of statistically stationary optical fields, spectral changes that may take place on superposing fields produced by two partially correlated sources are discussed. Spectral effects in fields produced by two-dimensional secondary sources and by three-dimensional primary sources are then considered. The section which follows describes spectral changes that may arise when polychromatic light is scattered on media whose physical properties vary randomly either in space and/or in time. A review is also presented of recent research, which has revealed that under certain circumstances the changes in the spectrum of light scattered on random media may imitate the Doppler effect, even though the source, the medium and the observer are all at rest with respect to one another. In the final section a brief review is given of a new emerging technique sometimes called spatial-coherence spectroscopy. It is based on the discovery that it is possible, under certain circumstances, to determine field correlations from spectral measurements.
Abstract : It is generally taken for granted that the spectrum of light does not change on propagation. This belief is implicit in all spectroscopy. In the last few years it was discovered that while such spectral invariance holds for radiation from commonly used sources it does not hold, in general, because the spectrum of emitted radiation depends not only on the source spectrum but also on the coherence properties of the source. It was found that in some cases the induced changes may be appreciable, possibly resulting in frequency shifts of spectral lines. It has also been demonstrated that similar spectral changes may be produced by scattering on random media whose dielectric susceptibility fluctuations are appropriately correlated. Very recently it was shown that under certain circumstances the frequency shifts generated by dynamic scattering may imitate the Doppler effect, even though the source, the scatterer and the observer are all at rest relative to each other. (emk)
The effect of the statistical properties of fluctuating light sources on the spectrum of the emitted radiation has been the subject of intense research over the last few years. It was first shown that due to spatial correlations, the spectrum of light was not, in general, invariant on propagation, even in free space.1 It was also shown that these effects can lead to shifts of spectral lines, a result which is of interest particularly for astrophysics.2 In view of the intimate connection between radiation from localized sources and scattering from media of finite extent, similar spectral changes may also be produced by scattering. In this paper a model scatterer is introduced, whose dielectric response function is a random function of space and time and whose space-time correlation function is a Gaussian function in all its variables. Using the first-order Born approximation, such scattering media are shown to generate frequency shifts of spectral lines that imitate the Doppler effect in its main features. The shifts may be arbitrarily large. Some numerical simulations of such shifts are presented and compared with Doppler shifts.
It was recently shown that, when light is scattered from a random medium whose response function (e.g., the dielectric susceptibility) has appropriate correlation properties, the spectrum of the scattered light may be frequency shifted with respect to the spectrum of the incident light.1,2 In general the relative frequency shifts produced by this mechanism will be different for different spectral lines. We show that under certain circumstances the relative shifts generated by scattering from appropriately correlated space-time fluctuations may become frequency independent and may be arbitrarily large. This scattering mechanism then imitates the Doppler effect, even though the source, the scattering medium, and the observer are at relative rest with respect to each other.
It is generally taken for granted that the spectrum of light does not change on propagation. This belief is implicit in all spectroscopy. In the last few years it was discovered that while such spectral invariance holds for radiation from commonly used sources it does not hold, in general, because the spectrum of emitted radiation depends not only on the source spectrum but also on the coherence properties of the source. It was found that in some cases the induced changes may be appreciable, possibly resulting in frequency shifts of spectral lines. It has also been demonstrated that similar spectral changes may be produced by scattering on media whose dielectric susceptibility is appropriately correlated.
This article presents a review of coherence properties of electromagnetic fields and their measurements, with special emphasis on the optical region of the spectrum. Analyses based on both the classical and quantum theories are described. After a brief historical introduction, the elementary concepts which are frequently employed in the discussion of interference phenomena are summarized. The measure of second-order coherence is then introduced in connection with the analysis of a simple interference experiment and some of the more important second-order coherence effects are studied. Their uses in stellar interferometry and interference spectroscopy are described. Analysis of partial polarization from the standpoint of correlation theory is also outlined. The general statistical description of the field is discussed in some detail. The recently discovered universal "diagonal" representation of the density operator for free fields is also considered and it is shown how, with the help of the associated generalized phase-space distribution function, the quantum-mechanical correlation functions may be expressed in the same form as the classical ones. The sections which follow deal with the statistical properties of thermal and nonthermal light, and with the temporal and spatial coherence of blackbody radiation. Later sections, dealing with fourth- and higher-order coherence effects include a discussion of the photoelectric detection process. Among the fourth-order effects described in detail are bunching phenomena, the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect and its application to astronomy. The article concludes with a discussion of various transient superposition effects, such as light beats and interference fringes produced by independent light beams.