Experimental generation of partially coherent beams with different complex degrees of coherence

Opt Lett. 2013 Jun 1;38(11):1814-6. doi: 10.1364/OL.38.001814.

Abstract

We established an experimental setup for generating partially coherent beams with different complex degrees of coherence, and we report experimental generation of an elliptical Gaussian Schell-model (GSM) beam and a Laguerre-GSM beam for the first time. It has been demonstrated experimentally that an elliptical GSM beam and a Laguerre-GSM beam produce an elliptical beam spot and a dark hollow beam spot in the focal plane (or in the far field), respectively, which agrees with theoretical predictions. Our results are useful for beam shaping and particle trapping.