Weak measurement of the Goos-Hanchen shift of partially coherent light beams

Optical beam shifts are very small and challenging phenomena to measure. Weak measurement techniques have been developed to amplify and more easily measure the shifts of spatially coherent beams. We here investigate theoretically a weak measurement technique for measuring the Goos-Hanchen shift of partially spatially coherent beams. We show that the amplification factor of the technique depends on the global coherence degree of the field and on the size of the Goos-Hanchen shift experienced by the beam. Large amplification factors can be obtained for low shifts, even for very incoherent beams. But, for higher beam shifts, such as those occurring near critical incidence, the amplification factors are modest to low for beams of low coherence. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America