Synthesis of Im-Bessel correlated beams via coherent modes

We present the first high-quality experimental realization of a random optical beam as a linear superposition of its coherent modes. The individual modes are generated by passing a laser beam through a phase-only spatial light modulator. A random stationary beam is obtained by using a temporally randomized sequence of its coherent modes, each contributing, on average, with a weight proportional to the corresponding mode eigenvalue. As an example, the new method is applied to a I-m-Bessel correlated beam which was originally introduced in theory via the coherent mode decomposition, but could not have been experimentally generated so far by any other method. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America