R Martínez-Herrero 1, P M Mejías 1, S Bosch 2 and A Carnicer 2
1
Departamento de Óptica, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040-Madrid, Spain
2
Departamento de Física Aplicada y Óptica, Facultad de Física, Universidad de Barcelona, 08028-Barcelona, Spain
Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics Create an alert RSS this journal
R Martínez-Herrero et al 2004 J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 6 S64
The concept of the so-called closest field to a given vector function is extended to the non-polarized case. Attention is focused on transverse field solutions of the Maxwell equations whose transverse character is preserved under free propagation. The coherence matrix of the non-paraxial transverse field that is closest to a paraxial unpolarized transverse beam is given. It is shown that the intensity matrix of this closest field can be written as the sum of the intensity matrices of a non-polarized field and a totally polarized beam.
Issue 3 (March 2004)
Received 12 September 2003 , accepted for publication 19 December 2003
Published 24 February 2004
R Martínez-Herrero et al 2004 J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 6 S64
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