Title：Weaving Coherence Carpets with Diffraction Gratings

Speaker：Professor Taco D. Visser

Time: 15:30, May 20（Tuesday）

Location: Room 215, No. 8 Hainayuan Building

Abstract:

When a fully coherent light beam is diffracted by a grating, the intensity creates a beautiful and surprisingly complex pattern, called a Talbot carpet. Similarly, when an atomic beam passes through a grating, the probability density forms a quantum carpet. We report the discovery of a third kind of pattern that can be produced by a grating: a so-called coherence carpet. These

are woven when the incident beam is spatially partially coherent. Such carpets may be used to test the effects of coherence on the wavelength scale. This talk begins with a short introduction of gratings and their many applications.

Example of a Talbot carpet behind a grating, showing both fractional and fractal behavior.

Biography:

Taco Visser earned his PhD at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has been Professor of Theoretical Physics at Delft University of Technology and Free University of Amsterdam, both in The Netherlands, and the University of Rochester, in the USA. He is now Yangzte scholar at Shandong Normal University in Jinan. His research focuses on diffraction theory, nano-optics, plasmonics and coherence theory. He has served as Topical Editor for JOSA A, and is an Optica Fellow. Currently he is Topical Editor of Chinese Optics Letters as well as Editor-in-Chief of the review series Progress in Optics.