Three-dimensional coherence of light speckles: Experiment

We provide an experimental detailed study of the three-dimensional coherence properties of light speckles produced by different tunable pseudothermal sources. Our findings confirm the theoretical prediction of the companion article A. Gatti et al., Phys. Rev. A 78, 063806 2008 , according to which the longitudinal coherence of the speckles is ruled by ordinary diffraction laws only in the deep-Fresnel zone close to the source, deviates from this behavior in the Fresnel zone, and tends to become infinite when approaching the Fraunhofer zone. A quantitative comparison with theory is presented for Gaussian speckles in all the three regimes and for Airy speckles in the deep-Fresnel zone. Potential applications to three-dimensional imaging techniques are briefly discussed.