Use of intensity interferometry for recording and reconstruction of images of spatially noncoherent polychromatic sources

An analysis is made of the possibility of using intensity interferometry in obtaining images of spatially noncoherent polychromatic sources. It is shown that in the case of spectrally pure processes the propagation operator of the spatial part of the correlation function has a transformation kernel which is the temporal coherence function. Consequently, optical reconstruction with the aid of the Fourier transformation results in distortions of the image whose magnitude depends on the relative frequency bandwidth of the radiation emitted by the object. If a point reference source is used, distortions depend also on the spectral characteristics and spatial position of this source.