Spatial coherence of broad-area laser diodes

We model the spatial coherence of broad-area laser diodes (BALDs) by representing the mutual intensity as superpositions of individually fully coherent but mutually uncorrelated fields. Consideration of spectroscopic modal structure measurements and intensity-based mode recovery shows that the standard Mercer-type coherent-mode expansion can lead to unsatisfactory results for real BALDs. However, we show that a so-called shifted elementary-field method provides a sufficiently accurate tool for spatial coherence and propagation modeling even if the modal structure of the BALD is severely distorted.