Specular transformation of electromagnetic partially coherent beams with a wave-folding interferometer

Abstract We consider a class of specular or anti-specular vector beams, by illuminating stochastic vector beams into a prism-based wavefront-folding interferometer. Such transform is applied to various genuine model input beams, and then the properties of the resulting fields are discussed. Numerical results show that the specular nature of these vector fields not only creates sharp internal spectral density distribution, but also produces novel polarization patterns with oscillations or a central dip on the degree of polarization-profile. Such optical characteristics can be flexibly modulated by the correlation structure of the source. We also suggest that the specular transform could be efficiently employed in developing novel partially coherent vector beams.