Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Laser brightness is crucial in many optical processes, and is optimized by high power, high beam quality (low M 2 ) beams. Here we show how to improve the laser beam quality factor (reducing the M 2 ) of arbitrary structured light fields in a lossless manner using continuous phase-only elements, thus allowing for the increase in brightness by a simple linear optical transformation. We demonstrate the principle with four high M 2 initial beams, converting each to a Gaussian ( M 2 ≈ 1 ) with a dramatic increase in brightness of > 10 × . This work puts a new (to the best of our knowledge) perspective on the old debate of improving laser beam quality with binary diffractive optics, while providing a practical approach to enhancing laser brightness for arbitrary input beams.
Source: Optics Letters
DOI: 10.1364/ol.397493
Authors: Stirling Scholes, Andrew Forbes
Institution: University of the Witwatersrand
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G3200066644, G4440113570
OpenAlex ID: W3035344936