Efficient method for controlling the spatial coherence of a laser
Optics
2015-06-16 v1
Abstract
An efficient method to tune the spatial coherence of a degenerate laser over a broad range with minimum variation in the total output power is presented. It is based on varying the diameter of a spatial filter inside the laser cavity. The number of lasing modes supported by the degenerate laser can be controlled from 1 to 320,000, with less than a 50% change in the total output power. We show that a degenerate laser designed for low spatial coherence can be used as an illumination source for speckle-free microscopy that is 9 orders of magnitude brighter than conventional thermal light.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1307.3361,
title = {Efficient method for controlling the spatial coherence of a laser},
author = {Micha Nixon and Brandon Redding and Asher Friesem and Hui Cao and Nir Davidson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.3361},
year = {2015}
}