Hidden transverse-flow topology in partially coherent structured light
Abstract
Partial coherence is commonly viewed as a mechanism that reduces contrast or smooths intensity structure. Here we show that it can also encode hidden transverse-flow topology. Starting from the cross-spectral density, we formulate a generalized transverse flux, an effective velocity field, and the associated flux trajectories for quasi-monochromatic partially coherent paraxial beams. This construction converts two-point correlation phases into local transport information and reduces to the usual coherent energy-flow picture in the single-mode limit. Because the generalized flux is obtained through a local differential operation on the cross-spectral density, the proposed trajectories are, in principle, reconstructible from sufficiently resolved phase-sensitive measurements of the complex second-order coherence function, subject to the regularization required by numerical differentiation. Two analytical beam families expose this hidden topology. In twisted Gaussian Schell-model beams, a Gaussian intensity hides a distributed rotational flow with nonzero vorticity. In Laguerre-Christoffel-Darboux beams, sources with identical intensity profiles can have different flux topology, producing either spiral or purely radial trajectories. Thus, intensity and coherence magnitude do not exhaust the physical information contained in the cross-spectral density: partial coherence can reorganize the hidden topology of transverse optical transport.
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BibTeX
@misc{martinezherrero2026hidden,
title = {{Hidden transverse-flow topology in partially coherent structured light}},
author = {Rosario Martínez-Herrero and Ángel S. Sanz},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.14923},
eprint = {2608.14923},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.14923},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Hidden transverse-flow topology in partially coherent structured light
AU - Rosario Martínez-Herrero
AU - Ángel S. Sanz
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.14923
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.14923
AB - Partial coherence is commonly viewed as a mechanism that reduces contrast or smooths intensity structure. Here we show that it can also encode hidden transverse-flow topology. Starting from the cross-spectral density, we formulate a generalized transverse flux, an effective velocity field, and the associated flux trajectories for quasi-monochromatic partially coherent paraxial beams. This construction converts two-point correlation phases into local transport information and reduces to the usual coherent energy-flow picture in the single-mode limit. Because the generalized flux is obtained through a local differential operation on the cross-spectral density, the proposed trajectories are, in principle, reconstructible from sufficiently resolved phase-sensitive measurements of the complex second-order coherence function, subject to the regularization required by numerical differentiation. Two analytical beam families expose this hidden topology. In twisted Gaussian Schell-model beams, a Gaussian intensity hides a distributed rotational flow with nonzero vorticity. In Laguerre-Christoffel-Darboux beams, sources with identical intensity profiles can have different flux topology, producing either spiral or purely radial trajectories. Thus, intensity and coherence magnitude do not exhaust the physical information contained in the cross-spectral density: partial coherence can reorganize the hidden topology of transverse optical transport.
ER -