Figure 1

Modal characterization of propagating Hermite-Gaussian (HG) beam modes.
(a) The experimentally observed transverse intensity profiles of the lowest-order Hermite-Gaussian beam modes, starting with HG00 (lower left-hand side) and going up to HG33 (upper right-hand side). The color coded for the intensity is highlighted on the left-hand side where the blue and the red colors indicate the lower and higher intensity respectively, (b) the first 9 principal components (PCs) of the measure, (c) first two principal components analysis and color coded for the m and n indices of the HG beam modes (m = [0, 6], n = [0, 6]) and (d) second and third principal components analysis.