Get full access to Progress in Optics and 60K+ other titles, with a free 10-day trial of O'Reilly.

There are also live events, courses curated by job role, and more.

Chapter Five: Incoherent interference

Kaige Wang Department of Physics, Applied Optics Beijing Area Major Laboratory, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, Chinawangkg@bnu.edu.cn

Abstract

The interference phenomenon of light is a common but most important effect in physics. In this chapter, we compare and analyze the interference effects of both coherent and incoherent light; in particular, the interference of spatially incoherent light sources is described. Thermal light and a two-photon entangled source may both be regarded as incoherent sources which can generate similar second-order interference effects, but their underlying physics is quite different. First-order interference can be realized with both spatially coherent and incoherent ...

Get Progress in Optics now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Don’t leave empty-handed

Get Mark Richards’s Software Architecture Patterns ebook to better understand how to design components—and how they should interact.

It’s yours, free.

Get it now

Check it out now on O’Reilly

Dive in for free with a 10-day trial of the O’Reilly learning platform—then explore all the other resources our members count on to build skills and solve problems every day.

Start your free trial Become a member now