Mafusire Cosmas, Forbes Andrew
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research National Laser Centre, P.O. Box 395, Pretoria, South Africa.
J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis. 2011 Jul 1;28(7):1372-8. doi: 10.1364/JOSAA.28.001372.
We outline a theory for the calculation of the beam quality factor of an aberrated laser beam. We provide closed-form equations that show that the beam quality factor of an aberrated Gaussian beam depends on all primary aberrations except tilt, defocus, and x-astigmatism. The model is verified experimentally by implementing aberrations as digital holograms in the laboratory.