Realization of Nontrivial Partial Spatial Coherence by a Deformable Mirror

In this work, we employ singular-value decomposition to generate two types of partially coherent phase screens, exhibiting either polynomial or Gaussian decay of correlation. Ensembles of 10,000 phase screens are realized at a kHz rate using a deformable mirror unit, and it is demonstrated using a Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor and beam quality measurements that the statistics are distinguishable in their correlation decay. The goodness-of-fit (R²) difference between the ideal and empirical correlation matrices is of order 10%. An analytical expression for the effective beam quality due to a Gaussian phase screen is presented and found to be in excellent agreement with empirical data. This study extends existing capabilities and can enable applications of partially coherent beam shaping, such as turbulence mitigation and incoherent soliton generation in nonlinear media.