How to Align a beam path Safely and Sensibly

Practicum Talk

Prerna Kabtiyal
16 Aug 2021
Basic Laser Safety Guidelines
• Wear Laser Safety Goggles when using or around a LASER
• Make sure the googles are rated for wavelength in use (OD>6)
• Don’t put body parts in line of LASER

• Enclose LASER in dark enclosures, when necessary/possible Courtesy: fischersci.com

• Take account of all possible stray beams

• Do not focus high intensity LASERs

• Can cause fires

• Avoid using flammable objects around the LASER Laser beam block
Optical enclosure courtesy: edmundoptics
courtesy: thorlabs
• Avoid metal
• Do not wear metal jewellery and watches etc when operating a
LASER
• Do not put metal tools (screwdrivers, wrenches, alan keys) in the
line of LASER

• Employ multiple LASER blocks throughout the beam path

• Should be quickly accessible from every position around the table
 ‘Seeing’ Invisible Lasers IR Viewer

• Aligning with UV or IR lasers is dangerous

as you can’t see them
Laser Power Meter
• You can see them with special
instruments
• Only for alignment purposes
• Cannot see them at all times
C/o: newport.com
• Need to be super aware and careful
IR Card
• Always perform the alignment with low
power
• Very low power might be hard to
see, and reduce further after filters C/o: Edmund Optics
• Pick a sensible power
• Laser Power Meter is used to
measure power
 Aligning along a straight line
• You should at all times know, exactly where your laser beam is
going
• Important for laser safety
• Helps in aligning complex beam paths
• Makes subsequent removal/addition of components Optical Breadboard
(c/o: newport.com)
easier and safe
• Beam should be centred on optics
• Avoids clipping with small beam drifts or small changes
in beam size
• Lenses perform most efficiently when beam is along their
optical axis (center)
• Beams should be aligned along straight lines
• Helps to center the beam on optics
• Use hole rows on optical breadboards as guidelines
• Use two beam blocks, two irises to ensure straight beam
• Can also use a paper card mounted on a post with
marked center (low power beam)
• Beam steering
• Mirrors are used to direct the beam
• Beam should be turned at 90o angles
• Beam should hit the mirror at 45o angle
• Place a beam block in the expected direction of beam
before inserting the mirror
Aligning a beam to reflective optics Parallel Z-fold Configuration

Kinematic Mirror Mounts

C/o: newport.com

• Kinematic mirror mounts are used for Perpendicular (Figure 4) Configuration

optics alignment
• Mirror can be inclined to steer the beam
along horizontal and vertical axis
• Make sure the mount spring is
retracted,i.e. mount is not inclined
before putting it in the beam path
• An inclined mount would steer the
beam to a random direction
• A series of mirrors with
unintentional inclination can cause
issues down the beam path
Walking the beam for alignment

• Aligning a laser beam using two mirrors and their relative adjustment
• Mirrors inserted at 45o angles
• Two irises with apertures
aligned at beam height
• Initially beam will be off-center
on both irises, or completely
blocked by first iris
• Adjust mirror 1 to align on first
iris
• Adjust mirror 2 to align to
second iris
• This might mess up
alignment on first iris
• Go back to adjusting mirror 1
followed by mirror 2 until the
beam is going through both iris
apertures
Types of lenses

• Convex Lenses: Converging

• Concave Lenses: Diverging
• Compound Lenses: Combination of two
simple lenses with different optical
properties
Aligning a beam to refractive optics
Alignment for lenses Translation Stages Focussing beam on detectors

ff
D D
E E
T T
E E
C C
T T
O O
C/o: newport.com R R

• Start with a straight, parallel
beam
• Lens should be inserted such as
beam is centred and travels
along the optical axis
• Off-center beam would not go
straight after the lens
• This can be used to align
the lens
• Use a beam block while
aligning
• Translational stages are • Beam entering the lens
used with lenses and should be parallel
other refractive optics • Beam should be
• Mostly 1D and 2D centred on the lens
stages are used with • Detector/Sample
lenses should be placed
according to active area
considerations
 Collimating a beam
• Collimated beam: Beam of light composed of
f
parallel rays with constant beam diameter
• Ideal collimated beam does not exist
• We want a beam with low divergence
• Real world scenario
• Ideal point sources do not exist
• Light from extended sources can be
collimated to have low divergence
• Beam from commercial lasers are mostly
f1 f2 collimated with beam divergence measured
using the beam quality factor ()
• Why Collimated beam?
• The beam diameter will not vary with
distance, keeps beam processing consistent
• The beam spot will fit on the optics,
detectors etc. and avoid clipping
• Important to do with longer beam setups
• Also used for increasing beam diameter

𝑆𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒
𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 ≈
𝐹𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐿𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡h 𝑜𝑓 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑆𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑚
Changing beam diameter with lenses
f1 f2

d1 d2

𝑑2 𝑓 2
=
𝑑1 𝑓 1
f1 f2

d1 d2
Aberrations in lenses

Spherical Aberration Chromatic Aberration

C/o:www.lumenera.com

C/o: Stan Zurek, en.wikipedia.org

• For a spherical lens, width of the lens varies on the
edge vs the center
• Rays on the edge refract at a steeper angle compared
to the center
• Multiple points of focus occur
• This causes a blurriness of image/beam at the focus
• Different wavelengths refract at different angles
• Refractive index is wavelength dependent
• Multiple points of focus occur
• This causes fringes of different colors in an image
• In a beam path with multiple wavelengths, this
can be a major issue
Achromat Lens: Antidote to Aberrations
• Chromatic Aberration Correction
• A combination of convex (positive low index) and
concave (negative high index) lens
• Convex lens made of crown glass and concave
lens made with flint glass
• Crown glass: low aberration(Abbe no. V<50), low
refractive index
• Flint glass: high aberration (Abbe no. V>50), high
refractive index

• Spherical Aberration Correction

• Can modify the internal radius of curvature of
one of the lenses: course tuning
• Can modify the distance between the lenses: fine
tuning
• Optimization is a process of compromising
between aberrations

C/o: https://www.edmundoptics.com/knowledge-center/application-
notes/optics/why-use-an-achromatic-lens/
Changing the power of the beam
Optical Filters Half wave plate + polarizing beam splitter

F s-pol s+p pol

i s-pol
H
l
W PBS
t P
beam e
block r p-pol

beam block

• Optical Filters are used to reduce the beam power
• Filters are characterized by Optical Density(OD) number
• Part of the beam is back-scattered to accomplish filtering
• Back-scattered beam should be blocked, otherwise it will just
propagate back
• This can be dangerous
• At best, this beam will interfere with the original beam
and cause issues
• Laser beams are linearly polarized (usually)
• Half wave plate (HWP) used to rotate the
polarization by angles between 0 to 360 deg
• Polarizing Beam Splitter (PBS) transmits one
polarization and reflects the other
• Only one polarization used in the beam path and
other is blocked
Summary
• Be mindful of basic laser safety guidelines before and during the alignment process
• Beam should be aligned along straight lines, use rows of tapped holes on table as
guidelines
• Irises and beam blocks should be used to ensure straight beam propagation
• At all times be aware of the direction(s) the beam is propagating in
• Always have a beam block placed in the expected direction of beam before
inserting a new optic
• Beam should always be centred on the optics
• Beam should be reflected off of mirror perpendicularly, i.e. hit mirror at 45 o incidence
• Beam should travel along the optic axis of lenses,i.e. go through center
• Beams have inherent divergence, and need to be collimated to keep the beam diameter
consistent
• Use Achromatic lenses to avoid spherical and chromatic aberrations
• The power of a beam can be changed using an optical density filter or a combination of
Half Wave Plate and Polarizing Beam Splitter