Abstract

Several different approaches exist for obtaining a circularly uniform laser beam. The scope of most of these approaches is limited because, while some of these waste much of the input power, the other methods waste the spatial coherency of the beam during the process of conversion. We present the design of refracting beam-transforming systems¹ which are not only easy to fabricate but are also highly efficient. The design considerations used in the design process ensure that the spatial and temporal coherency of the to-be-processed laser beam are preserved by the optical system. While one of the systems is designed to convert an annular Gaussian input beam into an equivalent circularly uniform beam, the other system converts a circularly Gaussian input beam into equivalent circularly uniform beams. The proposed systems are compared to the other existing designs in terms of performance efficiency and ease of fabrication.

© 1988 Optical Society of America