Recent Developments in Laser Beam Engineering

Level: Introductory Length: 4 hours Format: In-Person Lecture Intended Audience: This material is intended for engineers, scientists, college students, and photonics enthusiasts who would like to expand their knowledge into the area of modern laser beam engineering and applications, better understand the unique characteristics of laser beams and their coherent combinations into OPAs, and become familiar with the state of the art in laser-based instrumentation. Description: This course covers fundamental principles and recent developments in laser beam engineering, including the formation of propagation-invariant laser beams and their transformations, formation of structured illumination, beam shaping, and beam combining. The course instructor will provide a detailed description of different laser beam types, their properties and propagation characteristics, as well as beam quality criteria. This includes the criteria required for resolving ambiguities in beam quality defined based on the M2 parameter. The course will also provide a comprehensive overview of laser output power scaling techniques, including coherent and incoherent beam combining. Based on numerous examples presented by the instructor, attendees will learn about exciting applications of modern beam shaping techniques and how laser beams are employed in a variety of modern photonics instruments, including laser scanners for autonomous navigation LIDAR systems, laser projection systems for 3D metrology, wearable display and augmented reality devices, laser machining, materials processing, and micro-manipulation. Learning Outcomes: This course will enable you to: - describe the unique properties of laser beams, including propagation invariance and self-healing, and the differences between a variety of laser beam types - state the terminology associated with laser beam propagation and characterization, as well as describe the propagation characteristics of stigmatic, simple astigmatic, and general astigmatic beams - compare techniques for producing structured laser fields employed in metrology, autonomous navigation, and interactive gaming applications - summarize the benefits and limitations of beam shaping and beam combining - describe recent developments and trends in laser beam engineering, including Optical Phased Arrays (OPAs) Instructor(s): Yakov G. Soskind is a renowned expert in physical optics and innovative photonics instrumentation development. For over 35 years, Dr. Soskind has made extensive contributions in the areas of laser resonators, beam shaping and control, diffractive optics and nano-photonics, optical engineering, imaging, and illumination. Dr. Soskind is the author of the Field Guide to Diffractive Optics (SPIE Press, 2011) provided as part of this course, and has been awarded more than 25 domestic and international patents in the field of photonics. Event: SPIE Optics + Photonics 2019 Course Held: 11 August 2019