Optical Design of Beam Delivery and Beam Forming Systems

Abstract

The layout of beam delivery and/or beam forming optical systems is a recurring task in development and application of laser systems and necessarily requires adequate simulation tools. Accurate and precise simulation of the propagation of laser beams through optical systems, with the aim of predicting the beam profile at desired locations, is challenging. It requires detailed characterization of the initial beam and application of sophisticated software, which usually can only be operated by highly qualified personal. Relaxing the requirements to the prediction of more general beam parameters like beam diameter, beam divergence, and Rayleigh length, important layout jobs can be accomplished by ease‐to‐use simulation tools based on a few beam parameters measured according to the well‐known ISO 11146 standard.