Laser beam shaping via conventional design software

Scott C. Holswade; Fred M. Dickey

doi:10.1117/12.446752

30 October 2001 Laser beam shaping via conventional design software

Scott C. Holswade, Fred M. Dickey

Proceedings Volume 4443, Laser Beam Shaping II; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.446752
Event: International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, 2001, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

Previous efforts have shown that optimization-based techniques, particularly genetic algorithms, can be used to effectively design beam shaping systems for several classes of problems. These techniques have used external programs to perform the optimization, which allow a great deal of optimization flexibility. However, the external program must be understood and tuned for beam shaping applications. For many problems, the flexibility of an external program is not required. This work shows that the internal optimization routines in a typical lens design program can perform effective optimization of several classes of beam shaping systems. In addition, previous beam shaping merit functions have used a large number of rays, typically 200, to perform the optimization. Several pieces of data must be recorded for each ray. This results in a fairly lengthy merit function evaluation by the lens design program. This work shows that by setting up certain problems using up-front geometrical considerations, reasonable optimizations can be obtained with as few as 20-40 rays being traced. Example problems are presented, including the merit functions used. Guidance is provided for the designer interested in picking appropriate parameters and optimization routines for some typical problems.

Citation Download Citation

Scott C. Holswade and Fred M. Dickey "Laser beam shaping via conventional design software", Proc. SPIE 4443, Laser Beam Shaping II, (30 October 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.446752

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