Characterization of polarization fluctuations in random electromagnetic beams

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© 2009 IOP Publishing. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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Volume Title

School of Science | A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2009

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Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

073004

Series

New Journal of Physics, Volume 11, Issue 7

Abstract

Two stationary, partially polarized electromagnetic beams with equal degrees of polarization may exhibit completely different time evolutions of the instantaneous polarization state. In this work, we derive a statistical quantity that describes the rate at which the field intensity in the beam, on average, is redistributed between the beam's polarization state at any time and the state orthogonal to it. This method allows one to treat the dynamical properties of the polarization fluctuations both theoretically and experimentally. We demonstrate the method by applying it to important special cases, such as fields obeying Gaussian statistics, black-body radiation pencils and depolarized laser beams. We also prove that a geometric approach introduced earlier is closely connected with the present model.

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Keywords

polarization fluctuations, electromagnetic beam fields, random electromagnetic beams, dynamical properties, polarization state

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Citation

Setälä, Tero & Shevchenko, Andriy & Kaivola, Matti & Friberg, Ari T.. 2009. Characterization of polarization fluctuations in random electromagnetic beams. New Journal of Physics. Volume 11, Issue 7. ISSN 1367-2630 (electronic). DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/11/7/073004.