Liquid Crystal Pancharatnam–Berry Micro‐Optical Elements for Laser Beam Shaping

Liquid Crystal Beam Shaping Devices Incorporating Coumarin-Based Photoalignment Layers

1. Abstract Liquid crystal (LC) devices incorporating photosensitive polymers based on coumarin were investigated for laser beam shaping applications. Presently, the OMEGA EP laser system uses pixelated metal beam shaping devices, though their relatively low damage threshold (approximately 0.2 J/cm 2) makes them poor options for long-term usage. LC devices have the major advantages of a much hi...

Nematic Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulators for Laser Beam Steering

Laser Beam Shaping with Membrane Deformable Mirrors

The performance of laser machining systems can often be improved by adjusting the intensity profile of the beam on the target. Shaping a laser intensity profile can be efficiently accomplished by adjusting the spatial phase of the beam before propagating the beam a distance to the target. Beam shaping can be accomplished with passive diffractive elements, but this technique is only capable of c...

Optical Design of Laser Beam Shaping Systems

An overview of the history and current practices of laser beam shaping is presented. When diffraction effects are not important, geometrical methods for laser beam shaping (ray tracing, conservation of energy within a bundle of rays, and the constant optical path length condition) can be used to determine system configurations, including aspheric elements and spherical-surface GRIN lenses, whic...

Historical perspective of laser beam shaping

An overview of the history and current practices of laser beam shaping is presented. When diffraction effects are not important, geometrical methods for laser beam shaping (ray tracing, conservation of energy within a bundle of rays, and the constant optical path length condition) can be used to determine system configurations, including aspheric elements and spherical-surface GRIN lenses, whic...