Self-reconfiguration of a speckle pattern.

It is well known that coherent Bessel beam, a nondiffracting class of beam, possesses the ability of self-reconstructing or self-healing in the presence of obstacles. Here, we generated partially coherent Bessel and Gaussian beams using a spatial light modulator and studied the speckle pattern intensity in propagation after some speckles were blocked. We demonstrated that these partially coherent beams are unexpectedly robust against scattering by objects, overcoming the coherent Bessel beam and remaining independent of any special class of partially coherent beams. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America