title: General approach for representing and propagating partially coherent terahertz fields with application to Gabor basis sets.
abstract: We discuss a general theoretical framework for representing and propagating fully coherent, fully incoherent, and the intermediate regime of partially coherent submillimeter-wave fields by means of general sampled basis functions, which may have any degree of completeness. Partially coherent fields arise when finite-throughput systems induce coherence on incoherent fields. This powerful extension to traditional modal analysis methods by using undercomplete Gaussian-Hermite modes can be employed to analyze and optimize such Gaussian quasi-optical techniques. We focus on one particular basis set, the Gabor basis, which consists of overlapping translated and modulated Gaussian beams. We present high-accuracy numerical results from field reconstructions and propagations. In particular, we perform one-dimensional analyses illustrating the Van Cittert-Zernike theorem and then extend our simulations to two dimensions, including simple models of horn and bolometer arrays. Our methods and results are of practical importance as a method for analyzing terahertz fields, which are often partially coherent and diffraction limited so that ray tracing is inaccurate and physical optics computationally prohibitive.
authors.affiliation: Cavendish Laboratory, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK. rhb21@mrao.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Rachel H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Berry
authors.forename: Michael P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Hobson
authors.forename: Stafford
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Withington