title: Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect with electromagnetic waves.
abstract: The classic Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment is analyzed in the space-frequency domain by taking into account the vectorial nature of the radiation. We show that as in scalar theory, the degree of electromagnetic coherence fully characterizes the fluctuations of the photoelectron currents when a random vector field with Gaussian statistics is incident onto the detectors. Interpretation of this result in terms of the modulations of optical intensity and polarization state in two-beam interference is discussed. We demonstrate that the degree of cross-polarization may generally diverge. We also evaluate the effects of the state of polarization on the correlations of intensity fluctuations in various circumstances.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Mathematics, University of Eastern Finland, PO Box 111, FI-80101 Joensuu, Finland.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hassinen
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tervo
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Setälä
authors.forename: A T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Friberg
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D060733:Electromagnetic Radiation; D004867:Equipment Design; D008859:Microscopy, Polarization / Q000379:methods; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016011:Normal Distribution; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000379:methods*; D011789:Quantum Theory; D015203:Reproducibility of Results