Time-domain Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of quasi-thermal fields and its application in linear optical circuit characterization.

We study temporal correlations of interfering quasi-thermal fields, obtained by scattering laser radiation on a rotating ground glass disk. We show that the Doppler effect causes oscillations in the temporal cross correlation function. Furthermore, we propose how to use Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of quasi-thermal fields in the time domain to characterize linear optical circuits.