Realization of Nontrivial Partial Spatial Coherence by Deformable Mirror

Partially coherent beam-shaping is a promising approach to mitigate turbulence-induced spreading. In this work, we employ singular-value decomposition to generate two types of partially-coherent phase screens, exhibiting either polynomial or exponential 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 minimally 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 the empirical data. This study extends existing capabilities and enables investigation into non-Gaussian partially-coherent beam propagation through turbulent or nonlinear media.