Abstract

A knowledge of the effective beam diameter of a laser beam is essential to many laser applications, such as material processing, read-out of optical disks, and metrology using laser sensors. Among many beam diameter measurement techniques, a relatively fast and inexpensive technique is provided by the use of ruling¹, ² where a beam scans the ruling and a detector placed directly on the other side detects the maximum and the minimum transmitted power through the ruling. The ratio P_min/P_max is found to be a function of the ratio r_O/L (beam radius to ruling period).

© 1992 Optical Society of America