Laser brightness is crucial in many optical processes, and is optimized by high power, high beam quality (low ${M^2}$) beams. Here we show how to improve the laser beam quality factor (reducing the ${M^2}$) of arbitrary structured light fields in a lossless manner using continuous phase-only elements, thus allowing for the increase in brightness by a simple linear optical transformation. We demonstrate the principle with four high ${M^2}$ initial beams, converting each to a Gaussian (${M^2} \approx 1$) with a dramatic increase in brightness of ${\gt}10 \times$. This work puts a new (to the best of our knowledge) perspective on the old debate of improving laser beam quality with binary diffractive optics, while providing a practical approach to enhancing laser brightness for arbitrary input beams.

中文翻译：

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通过仅对结构光进行相位整形来改善光束质量因数（M2）。

激光亮度在许多光学过程中至关重要，并通过高功率，高光束质量（低{{M ^ 2} $）光束进行优化。在这里，我们展示了如何使用连续的仅相位元件以无损方式改善任意结构化光场的激光光束质量因数（降低$ {M ^ 2} $），从而通过简单的线性光学来提高亮度转型。我们用四个高$ {M ^ 2} $初始光束演示该原理，将每个光束转换为高斯（$ {M ^ 2} \ approx 1 $），亮度急剧增加$ {\ gt} 10 \ times $。这项工作（就我们所知）为使用二进制衍射光学提高激光束质量的古老争论提供了新的观点，同时为提高任意输入光束的激光亮度提供了一种实用的方法。