Spatio-temporal analysis of electromagnetic field coherence in complex media

Abstract: We study the coherence in time and space of electromagnetic fields propagated through complex media. Whether for localization, imaging or telecommunication, the development of dedicated numerical techniques is generally based on the exploitation of simplified models considering either coherent or diffuse fields. The optimization of such applications in conditions of partial coherence can therefore be particularly challenging, requiring the development of hybrid algorithms adaptable to prior knowledge on the processed fields. The objective of this work is to provide numerical techniques for decomposing an electromagnetic field into subspaces that can then be filtered according to their level of spatial and temporal coherence. In contrast to the studies carried out on space-space transfer matrices notably used for the calculation of Wigner-Smith operators, these decompositions are carried out on space-time matrices in order to facilitate the study of temporal dispersion. The theory is developed for illustrative purposes using experimental results from a leaky resonant system but seem to be applicable to any scattering and reverberating media capable of transforming localized and coherent excitations into complex and diffuse distributions. To conclude this work, the proposed technique is exploited to improve image reconstruction in a millimeter-wave computational imaging demonstration. In the studied context and from a more general perspective, we propose a technique to select the most suitable subspaces for each application operating under conditions of partial coherence, whether these correspond in the most extreme cases to ballistic paths or to diffuse fields.