Modeling of the laser beam shape for high-power applications

Abstract

© The Authors 2018. Aperture losses and thermo-optic effects (TOE) inside optics as well as the effective beam width in far field should be taken into account in the analysis of the most appropriate laser beam profile for high-power applications. We have theoretically analyzed such a problem for a group of super-Gaussian beams taking first only diffraction limitations. Furthermore, we have investigated TOE on far-field parameters of such beams to determine the influence of absorption in optical elements on beam quality degradation. The best compromise gives the super-Gaussian profile of index p = 5, for which beam quality does not decrease noticeably and the thermo-optic higher order aberrations are compensated. The simplified formulas were derived for beam quality metrics (parameter M2 and Strehl ratio), which enable estimation of the influence of heat deposited in optics on degradation of beam quality. The method of dynamic compensation of such effect was proposed.