New paper in Results in Physics describing the polarization and coherence of the field diffracted by a double retarder aperture
Our last work is now published in the journal Results in Physics entitled Polarization and coherence properties of the diffraction by a double retarder rectangular aperture. In this work we analyze the diffraction of a rectangular aperture with different retarders on each half. Under polarized illumination, it generates a structured polarization in the diffracted field. Using the combined Fourier transform Jones (FTJ) matrix and beam-coherence-polarization (BCP) matrix formalism, we also show that even when the aperture is illuminated with unpolarized light, and the field therefore remains unpolarized right after the aperture, the diffracted field yet exhibits a polarization and spatial coherence structure.
Experimental verification is conducted using a LCOS-SLM to encode the double retarder. The experimental system is completed with a second LCOS-SLM to implement a digital double-slit experiment. This enables to measure the scalar complex degree of coherence and shows that the double-retarder aperture can generate spatially-structured scalar coherence patterns under unpolarized illumination.
This work is part of the PhD Thesis of Santiago Ríos-Álvarez.