Niederriter Robert D, Gopinath Juliet T, Siemens Mark E
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
Appl Opt. 2013 Mar 10;52(8):1591-8. doi: 10.1364/AO.52.001591.
We demonstrate motion-free beam quality M² measurements of stigmatic, simple astigmatic, and general astigmatic (twisted) beams using only a focus-tunable liquid lens and a CCD camera. We extend the variable-focus technique to the characterization of general astigmatic beams by measuring the 10 second-order moments of the power density distribution for the twisted beam produced by passage through multimode optical fiber. Our method measures the same M² values as the traditional variable-distance method for a wide range of laser beam sources, including nearly TEM(00) (M²≈1) and general astigmatic multimode beams (M²≈8). The method is simple and compact, with no moving parts or complex apparatus and measurement precision comparable to the standard variable-distance method.
