Experimental investigation on a nonuniformly correlated partially coherent laser.

We demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge, a new kind of laser, called a partially coherent digital laser, producing nonuniformly correlated partially coherent light beams by "playing a video" inside the cavity directly. In this laser, a spatial light modulator (SLM) with dynamic phase modulation acts as a cavity mirror. The coherence degree distribution of the output beams can be controlled simply by varying the waists of the computer-generated holograms on the SLM. The experimental results show that the coherence degree between two points on the observation plane is not only dependent on the distance between them, but also on the positions that are observed across the beam.