Reply to comment on 'Spatial Coherence and Optical Beam Shifts'

Abstract

In a comment, Wang, Zhu and Zubairy repeat their previous claim that the spatial Goos-H\"anchen (GH) shift happening at total internal reflection at a dielectric-air interface depends on the spatial coherence of the incident beam. This contradicts our theoretical and experimental findings. Here, we show that the apparent disagreement between their numerical simulations and our results occurs only in a parameter range where the concept of a spatial beam shift is invalid, and that therefore their claim is inapplicable. We clarify this by discussing two key issues.