Wavefront and caustic surfaces of refractive laser beam shaper

Abstract

The wavefront and caustic surfaces of a refractive, aspheric laser beam shaper in its Keplerian configuration have been evaluated for a Gaussian to a flattened Lorentzian beam transform. The generalized ray tracing formalism of geometrical optics has been used to evaluate the principal curvatures of the refracted wavefront from the first aspheric lens. The caustic surfaces are the loci of the centers of curvature of the wavefront. Characteristics of the wavefront and caustics provide insight and understanding to how the irradiance redistribution evolves.