Top Hat Laser Beam Profile

Each application will demand its own type of top hat laser beam.

Top hat laser beam profile.

A flat top beam or top hat beam is a light beam often a transformed laser beam having an intensity profile which is flat over most of the covered area. The vast majority of laser beams exhibit a gaussian irradiance profile. In cytometry a top hat beam ensures that each cell being monitored is illuminated with the same irradiance. Such beam profiles are required for some laser applications.

This is in contrast to gaussian beams for example where the intensity smoothly decays from its maximum on the beam axis to zero. In theory a gaussian irradiance profile is not bounded and thus it can expand indefinitely. This means that their irradiance decays smoothly from the centre point towards the edges. For instance in hole drilling the top hat beam can be square or circular whereas some applications in materials processing will benefit from a line or square profile distribution.

Laser beam shaping solutions top hat beam shaper a self contain input beam adaptable module to easily convert a laser beam to an uniform top hat profile. Tophat beams are often used in industry for example for laser drilling of holes in printed circuit boards. In optics a tophat or top hat beam such as a laser beam or electron beam has a near uniform fluence energy density within a circular disk. It is typically formed by diffractive optical elements from a gaussian beam.