Improvements in laser beam characterization with a CCD-based setup

Abstract

CCD-based setups are widely extended in commercial beam profilers. In many beam-profiling applications the high sensitivity of CCD-camera makes necessary the attenuation of the beam. It can affect the beam profile and cause lost of information in regions of low irradiance. In this work we analyze the combined influence of noise and masking in the beam characterization, particularly in the measurement of second order moments. We also apply an extended intensity range imaging technique to improve the quality of the information obtained by a generic instrument. It is achieved merging several images with different sensitivities which are obtained with different integration times.