An intuitive introduction to the concept of spatial coherence

2014/08/17 by Héctor Rabal, Nelly L. Cap, Rabal, Héctor +5
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · #Architecture and Art History Studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #Physics Education (physics.ed-ph) #physics.ed-ph #physics.optics

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1408.3820

arxiv created 2014/08/17 · openalex publication_date 2014/08/17 · arxiv updated 2014/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The concept of spatial coherence is usually hard to be understood the first time that it is studied. We propose here a fully intuitive geometric description that does not contain mathematical difficulties and permits to understand how a Young Fringes system is obtained with a source not spatially coherent. It is based in a very simple experiment that permits the detection of spatial coherence in a scene. Experimental results are shown.

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