162
Views
6
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

Wigner functions for paraxial and nonparaxial fields

, &
Pages 1843-1852 | Received 10 Sep 2009, Accepted 28 Sep 2009, Published online: 02 Nov 2009
 

Abstract

The Wigner function gives an intuitive representation of coherent and partially coherent wave fields in the frequency domain, which takes the form a ray weight distribution. However, this weight distribution is conserved along rays only for paraxial or significantly incoherent fields. Generalizations of the Wigner function have been defined for propagation through transparent homogeneous media that are exactly conserved along rays for any angular spread and state of coherence. A series expression is derived here for calculating these nonparaxial generalizations starting from the standard Wigner function.

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through award number PHY-0449708.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.