 Optical coherence time

An optical coherence time summarizes the delay scale of temporal optical coherence, but requires a convention. Two useful choices are the first positive delay ${\tau }_{1/e}$ where $|g^{(1)}|=e^{-1}$, for a monotonically decaying envelope, and the integral definitionThe latter counts correlation over both signs of delay and may diverge for ideal discrete lines. ^[ref].

For the stipulated Lorentzian and Gaussian profiles in temporal optical coherence, direct substitution and a Gaussian integral giveThe respective dimensionless coefficients are $0.318310$ for both Lorentzian conventions, and $0.530021$ and $0.664282$ for the Gaussian conventions. The familiar scale $1/\Delta \nu$ is consequently an estimate, not a convention-independent equality. A source with narrow discrete lines can have repeated revivals instead of one monotonically decaying envelope, so recording the full $|g^{(1)}(\tau )|$ can be more informative than one optical coherence time.