Cycle of phase, coherence and polarization singularities in Young’s three-pinhole experiment

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Important Dates

Conference:

Aug. 18-20, 2018

Full Paper Due: Jul. 20, 2018

Abstract Due: Jul. 20, 2018

Audience Registration Due:
Aug. 18, 2018

Presentations of The Int'l Symposium on Photonics and Optoelectronics (SOPO 2016)

● Cycle of phase, coherence and polarization singularities in Young’s three-pinhole experiment
Author(s)
Xiaoyan Pang
Affiliation(s)
Northwestern Polytechnical University
KEYWORDS
phase, coherence, polarization singularities
ABSTRACT
The discipline of singular optics, which is concerned with singularities in the topology of wavefields, has expanded dramatically over the past decade. It is now well-established that a variety of singularities can be characterized and observed. It was originally concerned with singularities in the phase of scalar wavefields and not long after, singularities of polarization were also described. In recent years, even more classes of singularities have been studied. Singularities of the spectral degree of coherence (called correlation vortices or coherence vortices) have been found in partially coherent scalar wavefields and eta singularities have been introduced in partially coherent electromagnetic fields. It is also known that these phase singularities, polarization singularities and coherence singularities are physically related, but the exact nature of their relationship is still somewhat unclear. We show how a Young-type three-pinhole interference experiment can be used to create a continuous cycle of transformations between classes of singularities, often accompanied by topological reactions in which different singularities are created and annihilated. This ar-rangement serves to clarify the relationships between the different singularity types, and provides a simple tool for further exploration.