title: Effects of coherence and polarization on the coupling of stochastic electromagnetic beams into optical fibers.
abstract: We study the problem of coupling an electromagnetic beam of any state of coherence and polarization into a multimode optical fiber. Using the well-known concept of the cross-spectral density matrix, we derive a general expression for the coupling efficiency of a stochastic electromagnetic beam into a multimode fiber in terms of the cross-spectral density matrix of the incident beam and another matrix representing field distributions of fiber modes. We apply this result to a specific case in which the incident beam belongs to a broad class of so-called electromagnetic Gaussian Schell-model beams and obtain a simple analytical expression for the coupling efficiency in the case of single-mode fibers. We use this expression to study how coupling efficiency depends on the coherence and polarization properties of the incident beam.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA. msalem@pas.rochester.edu
authors.forename: Mohamed
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salem
authors.forename: Govind P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Agrawal
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D004867:Equipment Design; D016011:Normal Distribution; D055100:Optical Fibers; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D013269:Stochastic Processes