Physical optics

About: Physical optics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5342 publications have been published within this topic receiving 101388 citations. The topic is also known as: wave optics.

Confocal volume in laser Raman microscopy depth profiling

Abstract: To clarify the degradation of confocality in laser Raman microscopy depth profiling (optical sectioning) and the influence of pinhole filtering on it, we investigate the confocal volume in detail based on Gaussian beam optics and scalar wave optics. Theoretical depth profiles of a homogeneous transparent sample for four different pinhole sizes, which are computed using the measured incident beam waist radius w0 and only a few optical system specific parameters such as a numerical aperture (NA) and a focal length, show a good agreement with the corresponding measured depth profiles. The computed confocal volume demonstrates that the pinhole size affects the actual probe depth as well as the axial resolution and the total intensity loss.

Atomic versus molecular diffraction : influence of breakups and finite size

Abstract: Atomic diffraction through double slits and transmission gratings is well described in terms of the associated de Broglie waves and classical wave optics. However, for weakly bound and relatively large systems, such as the He${}_{2}$ dimer, this might no longer hold true due to the possibility of breakup processes and finite-size effects. We therefore study the diffraction of weakly bound two-particle systems. If the bar and slit widths of the grating are much larger than the diameter of the two-particle system, we recover the usual optics results. For smaller widths, however, deviations therefrom occur. We find that the location of possible diffraction peaks is indeed still governed by the usual grating function from optics, but the peaks may have a lower intensity. This is not unexpected when breakup processes are allowed. More unusually though, diffraction peaks that would be absent for de Broglie waves may reappear. The results are illustrated for diffraction of He${}_{2}$.

Demonstration of an optical-coherence converter

Abstract: Studying the coherence of an optical field is typically compartmentalized with respect to its different physical degrees of freedom (DoFs)—spatial, temporal, and polarization. Although this traditional approach succeeds when the DoFs are uncoupled, it fails at capturing key features of the field’s coherence if the DOFs are indeed correlated—a situation that arises often. By viewing coherence as a “resource” that can be shared among the DoFs, it becomes possible to convert the entropy associated with the fluctuations in one DoF to another DoF that is initially fluctuation-free. Here, we verify experimentally that coherence can indeed be reversibly exchanged—without loss of energy—between polarization and the spatial DoF of a partially coherent field. Starting from a linearly polarized spatially incoherent field—one that produces no spatial interference fringes—we obtain a spatially coherent field that is unpolarized. By reallocating the entropy to polarization, the field becomes invariant with regard to the action of a polarization scrambler, thus suggesting a strategy for avoiding the deleterious effects of a randomizing system on a DoF of the optical field.