Electromagnetic Schell-model beams with arbitrary complex correlation states

A recently suggested technique for modeling of the complex coherence states of scalar stationary light beams [Opt. Lett. 43, 4727 (2018)] is extended to the electromagnetic (EM) domain. It is shown that spatially varying phase profiles of the 2 × 2 source correlation matrix allow for fine, independent, two-dimensional spatial control of the three components of the polarization matrix in the far field. An EM coherence sorter based on the linear phases of the coherence matrix components is introduced which enables spatial separation of the three independent components of the far-field polarization matrix without affecting their initial distributions.