Compact beam collimator for laser diode bar

Abstract

A compact beam collimator for a laser diode (LD) bar fabricated by a simple method is presented. It consists of a single set of microlenses and a cylindrical lens, which are fabricated from SiO2 rods using a fiber-drawing tower. The principle and parameter optimization of this device are investigated numerically using ZEMAX software and illustrated experimentally for a specific LD bar. It is shown that the output beam is well collimated in both the fast-axis and slow-axis directions; the beam quality is greatly enhanced via the redistribution of intensity in the two directions and by eliminating the fill factor for the LD bar.