Laser Beam Profiling: Cost-Effective Solutions

This book provides an overview of lasers, silicon sensors, and practical solutions to beam profiling which has never been presented in a single text. Understanding laser beam characteristics before and after interaction with an object provides intrinsic insights into the nature of the object. This knowledge is invaluable, say, in domains such as biophotonics where scattering nature of tissue can be quantified by understanding the aberrations introduced into a highly focused beam. The authors cover topics such as lasers and their characteristics, silicon sensors technologies such as CCDs and CMOS and provides a step-by-step guide to 3D profiling a laser beam. The book is supported by openly accessible MATLAB code and videos showing procedures. Intended as a laboratory handbook to undergraduate and graduate students using lasers and to serve as a refresher course for experienced researchers.

Key features

• Provides a comprehensive understanding of lasers, filters and silicon detectors, and their uses in the laboratory which is designed to familiarise graduate-level students with the working of these optical equipment.

• Includes the key aspect of laser safety prudent to all physics laboratories.

• Presents the basic information, skills, and an inexpensive solution that can be used with any laser system.

• Provides a comprehensive overview of practical calibration of lasers.

• Includes MATLAB downloads as well as video to help visualize MATLAB figures and to illustrate the textual description.