Experimental study of the second-order coherence of partially polarized thermal light

The second-order coherence functions of partially polarized thermal light and polarized thermal light mixed with polarized laser light are experimentally studied by employing pseudothermal light to simulate thermal light. Our experimental results suggest that the visibility of the second-order ghost imaging with partially polarized thermal light will increase with the degree of polarization. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that the measured normalized second-order coherence function of polarized pseudothermal light in a Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometer reaches its theoretical maximum value, 2, reported. The second-order coherence function of thermal light is decreased more significantly by the component with orthogonal polarization than the one with parallel polarization.