Compact optical system for pulse-to-pulse laser beam quality measurement and applications in laser machining.

Fluctuations in beam quality (M2) have been observed on a pulse-to-pulse basis from an industrial Nd:YAG laser. This was achieved with a compact multiplane imaging method incorporating quadratically distorted diffraction gratings, which enabled simultaneous imaging of nine planes on a single CCD array. With this system, we measured across a range of beam qualities with an associated error (in M2 variation) of the order of 0.7%. Application of the system to fiber-optic beam delivery and laser drilling is demonstrated.