Coherent emission of light by thermal sources

Université Paris-Saclay, Institut d’Optique Graduate School, CNRS, Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Palaiseau, France

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Abstract

While the light emitted by an incandescent body is generally quasi-isotropic, it was demonstrated in 2002 that a diffraction grating etched onto a silicon carbide (SiC) surface can exhibit highly directional emission, comparable to that of antennas operating in the radio domain. Directivity is the signature of the existence of spatial coherence of the field in the plane of the source, an unexpected property for a thermal source. This article describes the development of the ideas that led to this experiment and its current implications.