Variable-diameter refractive beam shaping with freeform optical surfaces

Smilie, Paul J.; Suleski, Thomas J.

doi:10.1364/ol.36.004170

Cited by 33 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The microlens arrays with larger sub aperture and less unit cell amount cannot segment the incident beam meticulously enough, hence the beamlets cannot fill up or neutralize each other, and adequately the deficiency and excess of the energy distribution at the overlapped area occurs. Since freeform optics has been widely studied for light beam shaping [22][23][24][25][26], we come up with a solution that by employing freeform microlenses, one can compensate these drawbacks. Because of its high design degree of freedom, each freeform surface in the array can introduce appropriate aberrations in the wave front to redistribute the irradiance of the beamlet correspondingly, and so that to improve the uniformity of the overlapped beam profile.…”

Section: New Design Methods Of Freeform Microlens Array Homogenizermentioning

confidence: 99%

Freeform microlens array homogenizer for excimer laser beam shaping

2016

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We presented a novel technique to design microlens optical beam homogenizing system for excimer lasers. As a new approach by applying freeform surface microlens array, the homogenizer can yield somehow superior beam shaping results with larger but less microlens units than conventional method. With new concept and design, the diffraction effects at the microlens apertures can be reduced substantially. Large scale and highly uniform beam profile can be realized at a relative nearby working distance after beam shaping. This is hard to achieve by conventional method. Our design method takes the real spatial energy characteristics of the excimer laser beam as the design basis, and combined with feasible optimization method. The design method is demonstrated as a real instance based, on a 193 nm ArF excimer laser in our laboratory. Moreover, to verify the effectiveness of our method, the designed freeform microlens array homogenizer has been fabricated and tested experimentally. The experimental optical performance of the homogenizer coincides well with the theoretical simulation.

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Section: New Design Methods Of Freeform Microlens Array Homogenizermentioning

confidence: 99%

Freeform microlens array homogenizer for excimer laser beam shaping

2016

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“…Engineered diffusers [10][11][12][13][14][15] are microlens arrays that deliver controlled optical divergence of light passing through them provided the input light is not highly divergent. Engineered diffusers have been traditionally deployed to control light divergence for various lighting and other applications [16][17][18][19] while maintaining a high optical transmission efficiency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of collimation quality of Gaussian beams produced with engineered diffusers

Kim,

Krajecki,

Imeri

et al. 2023

Laser Beam Shaping XXIII

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In this paper, we explore the collimation quality of collimated Gaussian beams generated via the deployment of engineered diffusers. Various aspects of beam propagation through engineered diffusers are explored using results from carefully designed experiments. Raw Gaussian beam is incident on a sample engineered diffuser. The beam is then collimated and propagated over several meters to clearly estimate beam divergence for different test cases. These test cases include raw and focused beams incident on engineered diffusers, the effect on collimation with the use of speckle reducers, and the evolution of the collimated beam wavefront during propagation. To measure and document the spatial coherence properties of beam propagation and its spatial coherence properties after propagating through the engineered diffuser, we measure the beam profile with knife-edge measurement, CCD imaging, and Shack-Hartmann sensor-based wavefront measurements along the beam propagation path. We do so for all different type of beam conditioning before incidence at the engineered diffuser – this includes analyzing the effects of a speckle reducer in the system. We present detailed experimental results and parameters of the propagating collimated beam in the paper. We hope that this paper will lay foundations for our understanding of using engineered diffusers for short distance free-space optical links using a beam collimation approach which is several times optically efficient than a pinhole based spatial filtering-based beam collimation approach.

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“…Although, it simplies the discretization of the phase of a DOE (for fabrication purposes), it requires the eld amplitudes to be known restricting its performance. Orozco and Barbosa (2013) employed both ray tracing and Huygen-Fresnel principle to characterise a complex optical setup in order to obtain the direct and inverse propagation functions to calculate the phase mask needed to produce the intended irradiance on the output image plane [10] Gaussian beam proles can be transformed into a attop beam by implementing a two element refractive optical system such as the one devised by Smilie and Suleski [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An approach to realisation of a Radial Phase mask using 3-D printing in transparent PLA

2017

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In the recent years, many different techniques and algorithms have been devised to design diffractive optical elements (DOE’s) for the purpose of beam shaping. This paper demonstrates an approach to realise a 3-D printed radial phase mask to be used in beam shaping to achieve a beam profile closer to the flattop. An iterative algorithm approach is employed to simulate the phase masks in greyscale and subsequently into STL format. These 3-D printed masks are used as an optical element and characterised using an experimental setup. The images of the light after the characterisation are examined and compared with the simulated results. Therefore, this method reduces the complexity as 3-D printing the masks eliminates the need for fabrication, processing time and number of components necessary to obtain a flattop beam profile.

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Variable-diameter refractive beam shaping with freeform optical surfaces

Cited by 33 publications

References 7 publications

Freeform microlens array homogenizer for excimer laser beam shaping

Freeform microlens array homogenizer for excimer laser beam shaping

Characterization of collimation quality of Gaussian beams produced with engineered diffusers

An approach to realisation of a Radial Phase mask using 3-D printing in transparent PLA

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