Conversion of a TEM_10 beam into two nearly Gaussian beams

Abstract

To achieve high output power and/or high efficiencies, laser systems are often designed to operate with either high-order or multiorder transverse modes. This comes at the expense of beam quality. Herein, a technique for converting the two lobes of a higher-order (Hermite-Gaussian TEM(10)) beam into two TEM(00) beams is discussed. It is shown that nearly 94% of the power in a single lobe of the TEM(10) beam spatially overlaps an appropriately chosen TEM(00) beam. Beam quality (defined by the M(2) beam quality factor) is increased by separating the two TEM(10) lobes with an edge aperture. A single-mode optical fiber can be used as a spatial filter to eliminate residual higher-order mode content. This study suggests that more than 90% of the power in a TEM(10) beam can be converted into two separate TEM(00) beams.