Efficient method for controlling the spatial coherence of a laser

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 nine orders of magnitude brighter than conventional thermal light. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America