Improved performance of three-mirror beam-shaping systems and application to step-tunable converters

Abstract

It is sometimes the case that a two-mirror beam-shaping system cannot transform the input beam to a desired target beam with sufficient accuracy. The transformation can be improved by using a third mirror in the shaping system. Also, there can be an infinite number of solutions possible for a three-mirror beam-shaping system. We have used such three-mirror systems to explore optimized solutions for mode converters for step-tunable gyrotrons.