title: Experimental study of coherence vortices: local properties of phase singularities in a spatial coherence function.
abstract: By controlling the irradiance of an extended quasimonochromatic, spatially incoherent source, an optical field is generated that exhibits spatial coherence with phase singularities, called coherence vortices. A simple optical geometry for direct visualization of coherence vortices is proposed, and the local properties and the spatial evolution of coherence vortex are experimentally investigated. To our knowledge, this is the first direct and quantitative experimental measurement of a generic coherence vortex.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Laboratory for Information Photonics and Wave Signal Processing, The University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zhihui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.forename: Steen G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Hanson
authors.forename: Yoko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Miyamoto
authors.forename: Mitsuo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takeda