Fresnel Diffraction by a Circular Aperture Illuminated with Partially Coherent Light. I

Abstract

A formulation is developed for investigating the intensity distribution of Fresnel diffraction by a circular aperture illuminated with partially coherent light. The theory formulated is applied to obtain the intensity distribution along the normal axis to the aperture in the Fresnel diffraction field when the spatially mutual coherence function of the illumination over the aperture takes three different forms. It is shown that the Fresnel diffraction is largely influenced by the coherence condition across the diffracting aperture.