Technical Article: Refractive Beam Shaping: From Maxwell's Equations To Products And Applications In Laser Materials Processing

This article will present the whole devolution from optical design and engineering to products and applications. A new software tool, founded on Maxwell's equations, is introduced that takes into account all-important physical aspects of the beamshaping task. Various beam-shaping principles like phase shifting for single-mode lasers, beam mixing for multi-mode lasers, and other beam transformation schemes are discussed. Based on the latest production technologies using computer-aided design (CAD), free-form microlens surfaces can be structured cost-effectively on a wafer basis.