High-efficiency line-forming optical systems and methods

摘要

A line-forming optical system and method are disclosed that form a line image with high-efficiency. A method includes forming a laser beam having a first intensity profile with a Gaussian distribution in at least a first direction and passing at least 50% of the laser beam in the first direction to form a first transmitted light. The method also includes: focusing the first transmitted light at an intermediate image plane to define a second intensity profile having a central peak and first side peaks immediately adjacent the central peak; then truncating the second intensity profile within each of first side peaks to define a second transmitted light; and then forming the line image at an image plane from the second transmitted light.

主权项

1. A line-forming optical system having an object plane and image plane and that forms a line image at the image plane, comprising:
a laser source that emits an initial laser beam; a beam-conditioning optical system that receives the initial laser beam and forms therefrom a conditioned laser beam having a first intensity profile with a Gaussian distribution in at least a first direction; a first aperture device operably disposed at the object plane and that defines a first slit aperture that truncates the first intensity profile in the first direction to define a first transmitted light that constitutes at least 50% of the conditioned laser beam; a relay optical system that defines the object and image planes and that also defines an intermediate image plane at which is operably disposed a second aperture device, the relay optical system defining at the intermediate image plane a second intensity profile having a central peak and first side peaks immediately adjacent the central peak, wherein the second aperture device is configured to truncate the second intensity profile in the first direction and within each of the first side peaks to define a second transmitted light; and wherein the relay optical system forms the line image at the image plane from the second transmitted light.