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  • Letter

Locked entropy in partially coherent optical fields

Mitchell Harling1, Varun A. Kelkar2,*, Kimani C. Toussaint, Jr.1, and Ayman F. Abouraddy3,†

  • 1PROBE Laboratory, School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA
  • 2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  • 3CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA

  • *Present address: Algorithmic Systems Group, Analog Garage, Analog Devices, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts 02110, USA.
  • †raddy@creol.ucf.edu
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Phys. Rev. A 109, L021501 – Published 8 February, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.109.L021501

Abstract

We introduce a taxonomy for partially coherent optical fields spanning multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) based on the rank of the associated coherence matrix (the number of nonzero eigenvalues). When DOF comprise two spatial modes and polarization, a fourfold classification emerges, with rank-1 fields corresponding to fully coherent fields. We demonstrate theoretically and confirm experimentally that these classes have different properties. Specifically, whereas rank-2 fields can always be rendered separable with respect to its DOF via a unitary transformation, rank-3 fields are always nonseparable. Consequently, the entropy for a rank-2 field can always be concentrated into a single DOF (thus ridding the other DOF of statistical fluctuations), whereas some entropy is always “locked” in one DOF of a rank-3 field. These results offer insight into the dynamics of optical coherence upon traversing systems or media that couple DOF.

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Phys. Rev. A 109, L021501– Published 8 February, 2024
  • Received 11 August 2023
  • Accepted 17 January 2024
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