Abstract
Flattened Gaussian beams are characterized by a waist profile that passes in a continuous way from a nearly flat illuminated region to darkness. The steepness of the transition region is controlled by an integer parameter N representing the order of the beam. Being expressible as a sum of N Laguerre–Gauss modes, a flattened Gaussian beam turns out to be very simple to study as far as propagation is concerned. We investigate the main features of the field distribution pertaining to a flattened Gaussian beam throughout the space and present experimental results relating to the laboratory production of this type of beam.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Yangjian Cai and Sailing He
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 23(10) 2623-2628 (2006)
Baida Lü and Shirong Luo
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 17(11) 2001-2004 (2000)
Massimo Santarsiero and Riccardo Borghi
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16(1) 188-190 (1999)