Real-time analysis of laser beams by simultaneous imaging on a single camera chip

The fundamental parameters of a laser beam, such as the exact position and size of the focus or the beam quality factor M² yield vital information both for laser developers and end-users. However, each of these parameters can significantly change on a short time scale due to thermally induced effects in the processing optics or in the laser source itself, leading to process instabilities and non-reproducible results. In order to monitor the transient behavior of these effects, we have developed a camera-based measurement system, which enables full laser beam characterization in online. A novel monolithic beam splitter has been designed which generates a 2D array of images on a single camera chip, each of which corresponds to an intensity cross section of the beam along the propagation axis separated by a well-defined spacing. Thus, using the full area of the camera chip, a large number of measurement planes is achieved, leading to a measurement range sufficient for a full beam characterization conforming to ISO 11146 for a broad range of beam parameters of the incoming beam. The exact beam diameters in each plane are derived by calculation of the 2nd order intensity moments of the individual intensity slices. The processing time needed to carry out both the background filtering and the image processing operations for the full analysis of a single camera image is in the range of a few milliseconds. Hence, the measurement frequency of our system is mainly limited by the frame-rate of the camera.