Coherence vortices in Mie scattering of statistically stationary partially coherent fields.

Points within a fully coherent complex scalar optical field, where the amplitude is identically zero but the optical phase has a jump discontinuity, have been widely investigated by the singular-optics community. More recent researches have extended the domain of singular optics to include partially coherent fields. For example, in coherence vortices the phase of the two-point spectral degree of coherence of a partially coherent field exhibits vortex structure around a point where the magnitude of the spectral degree of coherence vanishes. We show that the spectral degree of coherence of Mie scattered partially coherent statistically stationary electromagnetic fields exhibits a rich set of coherence vortices in both the internal and external fields. Specifically, we look at Mie scattering of a stationary beam from a dielectric sphere and study the formation of coherence vortices and their evolution with both the properties of the scattering sphere, and of the incident partially coherent beam.