部分相干激光束空间关联结构调控研究进展

Recent progress in modulating the spatial correlation functions of partially coherent beams

部分相干激光束在许多领域具有独特的优势。传统部分相干激光束的空间关联结构满足高斯函数分布,近年来具有非传统关联结构的部分相干激光束受到越来越多学者的关注。本文回顾了部分相干激光束空间关联结构构建基础理论,重点介绍了我们课题组在部分相干激光束空间关联结构调控方面取得的研究进展。研究表明,具有特殊空间关联结构的部分相干激光束表现出自聚焦、自偏移、自分裂、自整形等奇特特性,在大气激光光通信、微粒俘获和操控等领域具有重要的应用前景。空间关联结构的调控为光束性质调控提供了一个崭新的手段。

Partially coherent beams have a series of unique advantages for many application potentials. The correlation functions of conventional partially coherent beams satisfy the Gaussian distributions. Recently, great deal of attention has been paid to partially coherent beams with non-conventional correlation functions, and substantial progress has been made. In this short review, we first outline the fundamental theories on constructing correlation functions of partially coherent beams, and then present detailed description of recent progress in our group along this line. It is shown that partially coherent beams with speeiM correlation functions may offer several extraordinary properties, such as self-focusing, lateral shift of the intensity maximum, self-splitting, and self- shaping, while promising application potentials in free-space optical communications and particle trapping can be expected. It is suggested that correlation function modulation represents a novel approach to manipulate the characteristics of light beams.