Optical Hartley Transform of Partially Coherent Electromagnetic Beams

Abstract

The partially coherent electromagnetic beam is firstly applied to the optical Hartley transform (HT) system. The analytical formula for the off-axial electromagnetic Gaussian Schell-model beam propagating in the optical HT system is obtained. The information about the displacement magnitude and direction of the source can be represented in the form of fringes with a different space oscillating frequency and orientation, when we illustrate the distributions of both the spectral density and the spectral degree of polarization of the beam after HT. The coherence of the beam also influences the exhibition of the information. Our findings indicate that one can record the information in the form of distributions of spectral degree of polarization by use of an optical HT system and stochastic electromagnetic beams with different states of coherence.