Correlation theory of quantized electromagnetic fields. II. Stationary fields and their spectral properties

Abstract

In Paper I of this investigation, dynamical laws which describe the space-time development of second-order coherence tensors of a quantized electromagnetic field in vacuo, and the associated conservation laws, were derived. In the first part of the present paper these results are specialized to stationary fields. Second-order cross-spectral tensors for such fields are then introduced, and some of their properties are discussed. A relation analogous to the Wiener-Khintchine theorem of the theory of stationary random processes is derived. Various non-negative-definiteness conditions obeyed by the cross-spectral tensors are established, and equations which govern the spatial variation of these tensors are deduced. Certain analytic properties of the correlation tensors are derived, and some of their consequences are examined. It is also shown that in the limiting case when the two space-time arguments of the coherence tensors coincide, two of our conservation laws reduce to the averaged form of the energy and the momentum conservation laws of the electromagnetic field.