“Wolf Shifts” and Their Physical Interpretation Under Laboratory Conditions

This paper attempts to reconcile conflicting points of view of laboratory physicists and coherence theorists on correlation-induced spectral changes arising from the partial coherence of primary and secondary light sources. It is shown that, under normal laboratory conditions and in the Fraunhofer approximation, the directional spectrum of light does not change on propagation in free space, and that each frequency component of the total spectrum is preserved in accordance with the principle of energy conservation. It is demonstrated, and illustrated by examples, that descriptions of diffraction by the theory of partial coherence and by classical wave optics are fully equivalent for incoherent primary sources. A statistical approach is essential, and coherence theory is required, for partially coherent primary sources.