Abstract

To achieve high output power and/or high efficiencies, laser systems are often designed to operate with either high-order or multiorder transverse modes. This comes at the expense of beam quality. Herein, a technique for converting the two lobes of a higher-order (Hermite–Gaussian ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{10}$) beam into two ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{00}$ beams is discussed. It is shown that nearly 94% of the power in a single lobe of the ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{10}$ beam spatially overlaps an appropriately chosen ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{00}$ beam. Beam quality (defined by the $M^2$ beam quality factor) is increased by separating the two ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{10}$ lobes with an edge aperture. A single-mode optical fiber can be used as a spatial filter to eliminate residual higher-order mode content. This study suggests that more than 90% of the power in a ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{10}$ beam can be converted into two separate ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{00}$ beams.

© 2010 Optical Society of America

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