Abstract
We introduce an optical system for the nearly real-time generation of a wide class of partially coherent sources (PCSs) having non-Schell-model circular coherence. The system is composed of a modified 4f optical imaging system involving a fast modulated digital micro-mirror device (DMD) and a stable common path interferometric arrangement, which enable us to synthesize a variety of PCSs not reported heretofore. The basic principle and physics of our method, as well as the experimental implementation for generating two kinds of non-uniformly correlated (NUC) sources, i.e., cosh-type and sinh-type NUC sources, are presented, confirming the flexibility and reliability of our proposed approach. We further demonstrate the non-uniform property of the spatial correlation of the generated NUC sources by means of a classic Young's interferometer.
