Diffractive beam shaping for picosecond lasers

The characteristics of the picosecond laser glass cutting process require a small spot, typically 1-5um, with a depth of focus spanning the entire glass thickness, which can range from 0.2mm to 20mm. Gaussian beams cannot be focused to a tight enough spot while having a large depth of focus, due to the limitations of the Rayleigh range, necessitating beam shaping to achieve Bessel-like beams that have this extended focus range.

For this application, LASER COMPONENTS offers the diffractive axicon from partners Holo/Or, to generate a Bessel-like beam.  This improves on the standard refractive axicon as the diffractive solution negates the need for high surface quality requirements and feature no inactive tip zone.  Furthermore, diffractive axicons have near perfect wave front flatness and absolute angular accuracy.