Angular separation and spectra of two point sources determined from measured spectral coherence

Abstract

The theoretical foundation is described not only of how to determine the angular separation of two point spectral sources, but also on how to recover each spectral profile from the measured complex degree of spectral coherence. It is shown that the so-called space-frequency equivalence law is not always required. A simple simulation experiment is done by incorporating paired superluminescent diodes as the two point sources with different broadband spectra. The experimental results verify the validity of the theoretical prediction.