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Updated: Jun 16, 2026

Construction and Characterization of External Cavity Diode Lasers for Atomic Physics
Published on: April 24, 2014
Characteristic of laser diode beam propagation through a collimating lens
Qiang Xu1, Yiping Han, Zhiwei Cui
1School of Science, Xidian University No. 2 Tai Bai South Road, Xi'an, 710071 China. qxu@xidian.edu.cn
Abstract:
A mathematical model of a laser diode beam propagating through a collimating lens is presented. Wave propagation beyond the paraxial approximation is studied. The phase delay of the laser diode wave in passing through the lens is analyzed in detail. The propagation optical field after the lens is obtained from the diffraction integral by the stationary phase method. The model is employed to predict the light intensity at various beam cross sections, and the computed intensity distributions are in a good agreement with the corresponding measurements.
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