Spatial correlation properties of twisted partially coherent light focused by diffractive axicons.

We investigate the spatial coherence properties of a twisted, partially coherent field in the focal region of diffractive axicons. We demonstrate that the focused field is a combination of an infinite number of weighted, mutually uncorrelated, helical components, whose weights depend on both the coherence width and the twist strength, and the total helicity of the field inverts its handedness depending on the twist handedness and vanishes at the nontwist limit. Depending on the variances of whichever the effective coherence width, the twist strength, the twist handedness of the illumination, or the shape of the axicon phase function, substantive changes will intervene on the distribution of the spatial coherence degree of the focused field.