Continuous-phase elements can improve laser beam quality

Abstract

Siegman [Opt. Lett. 18, 675 (1993)] showed that binary-phase plates cannot improve laser beam quality. We demonstrate that continuous spiral phase elements can improve the quality of beams that originate from a laser operating with a pure high-order transverse mode. A theoretical analysis is presented, along with experimental results obtained with a CO(2) laser. The results reveal that a nearly optimal Gaussian output beam can be obtained with only a small decrease in the output power.