Non-stationary pulses with complex-valued temporal degree of coherence

It is shown that fine phase structuring of the temporal degree of coherence of a non-stationary pulse source leads to breaking its average arrival time symmetry on propagation in a linear dispersive medium. We employ the temporal counterpart of a recently proposed sliding function technique ((2018) Opt. Lett. 43 4727) for obtaining several models for the bona fide complex temporal degree of coherence of Schell-model non-stationary pulse trains and examine their evolution in fibers with and without a chirper. In particular we have examined linear, signum, cubic and trochoid phase models of the temporal degree of coherence. We also propose a simple method for experimental realization of the new pulsed sources and offer computer simulations confirming its viability.