Physical Optis Propagation vs Paraxial Gaussian Beam Data vs Skew Gaussian Beam Data

  • 13 February 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 126 views

Can anyone help to explain what is the difference between these 3 calculation method?

My laser has several tilted cylindrical lens and windows.

I use these 3 methods to calculate the beam size of my laser.

And these 3 method give me different result (difference quite big).

one more thing I notice that paraxial Gaussian beam data always give wrong result on Y direction (10 time bigger then reasonable value).

Can anyone tell me which on I should trust?

1 reply

Hi Rui,

If your system has tilted cylindrical elements, it is likely to fall in the category of generally astigmatic systems, and if those cylindrical elements are not aligned with the global X, and Y coordinate system, you should thrust the physical optics propagation (POP) results, provided it has been setup properly.



The paraxial and skew Gaussian beam analysis support simple astigmatism, and are inaccurate for tilted cylindrical elements.



Paul Colbourne discusses some aspect of Gaussian beam propagation in a webinar here:

 

https://my.zemax.com/en-US/Knowledge-Base/kb-article/?ka=KA-01772



Let me know if that answers your question.


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