Beam generation and beam shaping for a 1.5-kW diffusion-cooled annular CO2 laser

Uwe Habich; Arnd Heursch; Heinz-Dieter Plum; Reinhart Poprawe

doi:10.1117/12.308126

13 May 1998 Beam generation and beam shaping for a 1.5-kW diffusion-cooled annular CO₂ laser

Uwe Habich, Arnd Heursch, Heinz-Dieter Plum, Reinhart Poprawe

Proceedings Volume 3267, Laser Resonators; (1998) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.308126
Event: Optoelectronics and High-Power Lasers and Applications, 1998, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

A diffusion-cooled CO₂-laser with an output power of 1.5 kW was developed and set up with a coaxial RF-excited discharge. The laser beam is extracted by a resonator with helical mirrors, which is stable in the radial direction and unstable in the azimuthal direction. Without any beam transformation this laser emits a general astigmatic beam with an elliptical power density distribution, which is rotating in a plane perpendicular to the beam axis while propagating. Also, the beam shows hard edge diffraction effects due to the hybrid unstable/stable design of the resonator. In order to make the beam applicable to standard materials processing applications a beam shaping device has to be used to transform the general astigmatic beam into one of more rotational symmetry. The resulting beam has a times- diffraction-limited factor M² equals 1.5.

Citation Download Citation

Uwe Habich, Arnd Heursch, Heinz-Dieter Plum, and Reinhart Poprawe "Beam generation and beam shaping for a 1.5-kW diffusion-cooled annular CO₂ laser", Proc. SPIE 3267, Laser Resonators, (13 May 1998); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.308126

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