Temporal coherence modulation of pulsed, scalar light with a Fabry-Pérot interferometer

Abstract

We analyze the effect of a high-finesse Fabry–Pérot interferometer on the temporal coherence properties of scalar optical plane-wave pulse trains. We focus on the cases of single-peak and double-peak transmissions of Gaussian Schell-model (GSM) and supercontinuum (SC) pulses. For the GSM light, we show how the characteristics of the average intensity and temporal degree of coherence of the transmitted pulses depend on the coherence parameters of the incident field. Regarding the SC light, the output is found to depend specifically on the location of the transmission peak(s) within the average spectrum. The results demonstrate that a Fabry–Pérot etalon can act as a simple passive element for tailoring the temporal (and spectral) coherence properties of optical pulse trains.