Effects of spatial coherence of incident light on reflection and transmission

Abstract

It has recently been shown that spatial coherence properties of light scattered from a deterministic or a random medium can appreciably influence the nature of the scattered field.1 In this paper we discuss closely related situations, namely, the reflection and transmission of light of different states of coherence at a planar dielectric interface and with a plane-parallel slab. We assume that the incident light is generated by a quasihomogeneous Gaussian-correlated source,2 and we obtain expressions for the ratio of the total power of reflected and also transmitted light to that of incident light, as a function of the spatial coherence length of the source. We find that only when the source is locally incoherent, i.e., when its coherence length is of the order of the wavelength of incident light, will the results differ significantly from those obtained with a plane monochromatic incident wave.