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Beam Shaping with Cylindrical Lenses

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Beam Shaping with Cylindrical Lenses

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Cylindrical Lenses focus or expand light in one axis only. They can be used to focus light into a thin line in optical metrology, laser scanning, spectroscopic, laser diode, acousto-optic, and optical processor applications. They can also be used to expand the output of a laser diode into a symmetrical beam.A common application of cylindrical lenses is shown in Figure 1. A collimated laser beam of radius r0 is incident upon a cylindrical plano-concave lens of focal length -f. In this figure, the radius of the laser beam is exaggerated for clarity. The laser beam will expand with a half-angle θ of r0/f. The laser beam will appear to be expanding from a virtual source placed a distance f behind the lens. At a distance z after the lens, there will be a line with thickness 2r0 (ignoring expansion of the Gaussian beam) and length

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