ABSTRACT
In a variety of applications, including longitudinal solid-state laser pumping, 1 – 4 fiber coupling for fiber lasers, and line printers, 5 – 12 laser diode arrays have proven to be very effective light sources when combined with the appropriate beam shaping optics. As laser arrays can be designed in numerous ways, such as with phase-coupled single-mode emitters, uncoupled single-mode emitters, or uncoupled multimode emitters, the output properties of both the individual beams and the ensemble of beams vary dramatically. Inherently, many beam properties, including the output power level, beam profiles and beam propagation properties, beam coherence effects, and the overall device layout, are dependent upon the emitter structure. The optical systems that have been designed to work with these highly nontraditional light sources, which are anamorphic in both physical layout and beam properties, are themselves nontraditional, and typically employ a variety of modern micro-optical components. Within that context, a variety of unique systems 13 – 15 have been developed for high-power, high-throughput printing applications, where the laser light is transformed into a linear arrangement of individually modulated beams and imaged onto a light-sensitive media. These systems typically combine the design and analysis techniques from classical imaging optics, illumination optics, and Gaussian beam optics into integral wholes. Certainly, many of the design concepts that have evolved to support the laser thermal printing application are applicable to other endeavors, of which laser projection is an example.
