Open AccessSolutions for Beam Shaping
Author(s) -
Laskin Alexander
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
laser technik journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1863-9119
pISSN - 1613-7728
DOI - 10.1002/latj.201390007
Subject(s) - optics , beam parameter product , laser beam quality , laser , materials science , m squared , fiber laser , laser beam welding , multi mode optical fiber , beam divergence , collimated light , cladding (metalworking) , computer science , optical fiber , physics , laser beams , metallurgy
Growing popularity of high power lasers in material processing is accompanied with variety of demands to control the laser intensity profile and spot shape. The applications like metal or plastics welding, cladding, selective laser melting, hardening, brazing, annealing get benefits from providing flattop or inverse‐Gauss intensity distribution of a laser spot with round, elliptical or linear shape. The complexity of requirements is also increased due to variety of laser sources: solid‐state, diode or fiber lasers can be TEM 00 or multimode, free space or fiber‐coupled, CW or pulsed, the laser power spans from few watts to several kW. To meet these requirements the up‐to‐date beam shaping solutions can be built on the base of the field mapping refractive beam shapers like πShaper , which operational principle implies transformation of laser intensity distribution from Gaussian to flattop, super‐Gauss, or inverse‐Gauss, conserving of beam consistency, low divergence of collimated output beam, high transmittance, extended depth of field, capability to operate with TEM 00 or multimode lasers, implementations as telescopes or collimators. This article describes basic principles and important features of refractive beam shapers as well as some optical layouts that can be built on their base to meet requirements of modern laser technologies.