Interference is nothing more than the addition, in the mathematical sense, of wave functions. A single wave can interfere with itself, but this is still an addition of two waves see Youngs slits experiment. Constructive or destructive interferences are limit cases, and two waves always interfere, even if the result of the addition is complicated or not remarkable. When interfering, two waves can add together to create a wave of greater amplitude than either one constructive interference or subtract from each other to create a wave of lesser amplitude than either one destructive interference, depending on their relative phase. Two waves are said to be coherent if they have a constant relative phase. The amount of coherence can readily be measured by the interference visibility, which looks at the size of the interference fringes relative to the input waves as the phase offset is varied a precise mathematical definition of the degree of coherence is given by means of correlation functions. Spatial coherence describes the correlation or predictable relationship between waves at different points in space, either lateral or longitudinal. Temporal coherence describes the correlation between waves observed at different moments in time. Both are observed in the MichelsonMorley experiment and Youngs interference experiment. Once the fringes are obtained in the Michelson interferometer, when one of the mirrors is moved away gradually, the time for the beam to travel increases and the fringes become dull and finally are lost, showing temporal coherence. Similarly, if in a double slit experiment, the space between the two slits is increased, the coherence dies gradually and finally the fringes disappear, showing spatial coherence. In both cases, the fringe amplitude slowly disappears, as the path difference increases past the coherence length. IntroductioneditCoherence was originally conceived in connection with Thomas Youngs double slit experiment in optics but is now used in any field that involves waves, such as acoustics, electrical engineering, neuroscience, and quantum mechanics. The property of coherence is the basis for commercial applications such as holography, the Sagnacgyroscope, radio antenna arrays, optical coherence tomography and telescope interferometers astronomical optical interferometers and radio telescopes. Mathematical definitioneditA precise definition is given at degree of coherence. The coherence function between two signals xtdisplaystyle xt and ytdisplaystyle yt is defined as2xy. Sxyf2. SxxfSyyfdisplaystyle gamma xy2ffrac Sxyf2SxxfSyyfwhere Sxyfdisplaystyle Sxyf is the cross spectral density of the signal and Sxxfdisplaystyle Sxxf and Syyfdisplaystyle Syyf are the power spectral density functions of xtdisplaystyle xt and ytdisplaystyle yt, respectively. The cross spectral density and the power spectral density are defined as the Fourier transforms of the cross correlation and the autocorrelation signals, respectively. For instance, if the signals are functions of time, the cross correlation is a measure of the similarity of the two signals as a function of the time lag relative to each other and the autocorrelation is a measure of the similarity of each signal with itself in different instants of time. In this case the coherence is a function of frequency. Analogously, if xtdisplaystyle xt and ytdisplaystyle yt are functions of space, the cross correlation measures the similarity of two signals in different points in space and the autocorrelations the similarity of the signal relative to itself for a certain separation distance. In that case, coherence is a function of wavenumber spatial frequency. The coherence varies in the interval 0xy. If xy. 2f1displaystyle gamma xy2f1 it means that the signals are perfectly correlated or linearly related and if xy. If a linear system is being measured, xtdisplaystyle xt being the input and ytdisplaystyle yt the output, the coherence function will be unitary all over the spectrum. However, if non linearities are present in the system the coherence will vary in the limit given above. Coherence and correlationeditThe coherence of two waves expresses how well correlated the waves are as quantified by the cross correlation function. The cross correlation quantifies the ability to predict the phase of the second wave by knowing the phase of the first. As an example, consider two waves perfectly correlated for all times. At any time, phase difference will be constant. If, when combined, they exhibit perfect constructive interference, perfect destructive interference, or something in between but with constant phase difference, then it follows that they are perfectly coherent. As will be discussed below, the second wave need not be a separate entity. It could be the first wave at a different time or position. In this case, the measure of correlation is the autocorrelation function sometimes called self coherence. Degree of correlation involves correlation functions. Examples of wave like stateseditThese states are unified by the fact that their behavior is described by a wave equation or some generalization thereof. In most of these systems, one can measure the wave directly. Consequently, its correlation with another wave can simply be calculated. However, in optics one cannot measure the electric field directly as it oscillates much faster than any detectors time resolution. Instead, we measure the intensity of the light. Most of the concepts involving coherence which will be introduced below were developed in the field of optics and then used in other fields. Therefore, many of the standard measurements of coherence are indirect measurements, even in fields where the wave can be measured directly. Temporal coherenceedit. Figure 1 The amplitude of a single frequency wave as a function of time t red and a copy of the same wave delayed by blue. The coherence time of the wave is infinite since it is perfectly correlated with itself for all delays. Figure 2 The amplitude of a wave whose phase drifts significantly in time c as a function of time t red and a copy of the same wave delayed by 2cgreen. At any particular time t the wave can interfere perfectly with its delayed copy. But, since half the time the red and green waves are in phase and half the time out of phase, when averaged over t any interference disappears at this delay. Temporal coherence is the measure of the average correlation between the value of a wave and itself delayed by, at any pair of times. Temporal coherence tells us how monochromatic a source is. In other words, it characterizes how well a wave can interfere with itself at a different time. The delay over which the phase or amplitude wanders by a significant amount and hence the correlation decreases by significant amount is defined as the coherence timec. At a delay of 0 the degree of coherence is perfect, whereas it drops significantly as the delay passes c. The coherence length. Lc is defined as the distance the wave travels in time c.