Analyzing Astigmatic Beam Propagation by Means of the Complex-Ray Concept

Abstract

Experiments^[1]–[3] have shown, that beams emerging from solid-state slab lasers, semiconductor lasers exhibit astigmatic characteristics. In addition, the application of axis-asymmetric optical elements and/or resonators to solid-state slab lasers leads to the generation of generally astigmatic beams, hybrid beams (i.e. Gaussian beam-spherical wave) and astigmatic spherical waves^[4]–[7]. As p yet, some useful methods such as the generalized ABCD law and the eigenray-vector method were presented to analyze the characteristics of generally astigmatic beams and resonators, details are found in Refs^[5]–[7]. The subject of the present paper is to extend the complex ray concept, originally proposed by Arnaud^[8] to the general case, and then to study the astigmatic beam propagation by using this method.