🙋 Find out more about lasers with our other dedicated tools: the laser brightness calculator and the laser linewidth and bandwidth calculator.

The effect of the laser beam quality on the spot size is directly related to a deviation from the ideality of the beam. The ideal value of M² is 1, which corresponds to an ideal Gaussian beam.

Our laser beam spot size calculator will give you the answer to your problems at the speed of light. You only have to provide us with the numbers of the parameters you know, and we will calculate the result for both the laser beam spot size and the depth of focus.

Ultraviolet spectrumwavelength

Recent research suggests that UV light may have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth, especially the origin of RNA. In a 2017 article in the Astrophysics Journal, the authors of the study note that red dwarf stars may not emit enough UV light to start the biological processes needed for the formation of ribonucleic acid, which is necessary for all forms of life on Earth. The study also suggests this finding could help in the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

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The Rayleigh range is the distance from the waist at which a laser beam's area becomes twice its minimum value. At a distance of two times the Rayleigh range, the sharpness of the beam is insufficient to operate the laser (for imaging, cutting, etc.). The Rayleigh range is closely related to the divergence of a beam.

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The name LASER is the acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation", which describes the principal characteristic of the device itself: by pumping a medium where a specific light frequency may appear, we obtain the amplification of such frequency and subsequent emission.

Laser beams propagate following — ideally — the equation of a Gaussian beam, where the amplitude envelope follows the Gaussian function, with a smooth peak in the center, surrounded by decreasing tails.

UV radiation has enough energy to break chemical bonds. Due to their higher energies, UV photons can cause ionization, a process in which electrons break away from atoms. The resulting vacancy affects the chemical properties of the atoms and causes them to form or break chemical bonds that they otherwise would not. This can be useful for chemical processing, or it can be damaging to materials and living tissues. This damage can be beneficial, for instance, in disinfecting surfaces, but it can also be harmful, particularly to skin and eyes, which are most adversely affected by higher-energy UVB and UVC radiation.

An ideal Gaussian beam has the smallest possible spot size, thus preventing M² from assuming values smaller than 1. The spot size S increases with M² for any other value.

Lasers are sources of coherent light, which means that the light waves are in phase over a certain distance (the coherence length), thus maintaining their focus and small beam size.

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Laser emitters select a specific wavelength of light inside an amplification medium contained in a resonating optical cavity. The light gets amplified by repeatedly bouncing back and forth between two mirrors on the two sides of the cavity, traveling through the energized medium. One of the mirrors on the resonator side is partially transparent and allows the amplified wavelength to escape the camber.

In the diagram below, you can see the path of a laser beam from the emission to its focusing on a small spot. On the left, we find the emitter, followed by the collimating lens that corrects the divergence. Let's check these first steps.

One of the most common ways of producing UV light is passing an electric current through vaporized mercury or some other gas. This type of lamp is commonly used in tanning booths and for disinfecting surfaces. The lamps are also used in black lights that cause fluorescent paints and dyes to glow. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs), lasers and arc lamps are also available as UV sources with various wavelengths for industrial, medical and research applications.

Let's consider an example. We will study a green laser with wavelength 532 nm532\ \text{nm}532 nm, slightly deviating from a Gaussian beam: the quality parameter is M=1.12M=1.12M=1.12. Assume it reaches a lens with focal length 5 cm5\ \text{cm}5 cm with a diameter of 0.5 mm0.5\ \text{mm}0.5 mm.

One of the uses of collimated laser beams is optic fiber communication. A well-collimated laser can propagate for long distances in the "comfortable" medium of fibers, only needing some amplification on the way.

The beam quality parameter M2M^2M2 is a measure of how much a laser beam deviates from the ideal Gaussian beam (which corresponds to M2=1M^2=1M2=1).

Sometimes the cells with DNA mutated by the sun's rays turn into problem cells that don't die but keep proliferating as cancers. "The UV light causes random damages in the DNA and DNA repair process such that cells acquire the ability to avoid dying," said Chuang.

by J Fu · 2021 — Beam divergence angle is the degree to which the beam width or beam diameter increases with the distance from the beam waist. The far-field ...

The shorter the focal length of the lens, the smaller the spot, which allows for the engraving of finer details. However, smaller spots are not suitable for working with thick materials.

5 uses ofultravioletrays

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After reaching the focus, the laser beam gets wider, losing its small beam spot size and progressively resembling a "normal" source of light.

When the laser beam reaches its destination, you may want to focus it, concentrating its power in a small spot. Think of laser cutters, mainly, but also the standard pointers. A lens is often included to keep the divergence at bay. How small can we focus our beam?

Ultraviolet spectrumradiation

Fluorescence can also be used to locate and identify certain minerals and organic materials. According to Thermo Fisher Scientific, Life Technologies, "Fluorescent probes enable researchers to detect particular components of complex biomolecular assemblies, such as live cells, with exquisite sensitivity and selectivity."

Physicists decided to quantify this loss of focus through an appositely set quantity called the Rayleigh range: the distance from the waist (or any focusing point) at which the beam spot size doubles its area (which corresponds to an increase of 2\sqrt{2}2​ of the diameter). A laser beam's depth of focus corresponds to twice the Rayleigh range: when we move past this distance, the laser loses its sharpness and coherence.

"Melanin is a natural sunscreen," Gary Chuang, an assistant professor of dermatology at Tufts University School of Medicine, told Live Science in a 2013 interview. However, continued exposure to UV radiation can overwhelm the body's defenses. When this happens, a toxic reaction occurs, resulting in sunburn. UV rays can damage the DNA in the body's cells. The body senses this destruction and floods the area with blood to help with the healing process. Painful inflammation occurs as well. Usually within half a day of overindulging in the sun, the characteristic red-lobster look of a sunburn begins to make itself known, and felt.

Many substances — including minerals, plants, fungi and microbes, as well as organic and inorganic chemicals — can absorb UV radiation. Absorption causes electrons in the material to jump to a higher energy level. These electrons can then return to a lower energy level in a series of smaller steps, emitting a portion of their absorbed energy as visible light. Materials used as pigments in paint or dye that exhibit such fluorescence appear brighter under sunlight because they absorb invisible UV light and re-emit it at visible wavelengths. For this reason they are commonly used for signs, safety vests and other applications in which high visibility is important.

Black-light tubes typically use mercury vapor to produce long-wave UVA light, which causes certain dyes and pigments to fluoresce. The glass tube is coated with a dark-purple filter material to block most of the visible light, making the fluorescent glow appear more pronounced. This filtering is not needed for applications such as disinfecting.

Most of the natural UV light people encounter comes from the sun. However, only about 10 percent of sunlight is UV, and only about one-third of this penetrates the atmosphere to reach the ground, according to the National Toxicology Program (NTP). Of the solar UV energy that reaches the equator, 95 percent is UVA and 5 percent is UVB. No measurable UVC from solar radiation reaches the Earth's surface, because ozone, molecular oxygen and water vapor in the upper atmosphere completely absorb the shortest UV wavelengths. Still, "broad-spectrum ultraviolet radiation [UVA and UVB] is the strongest and most damaging to living things," according to the NTP's "13th Report on Carcinogens."

It may seem counterintuitive to treat skin cancer with the same thing that caused it, but PUVA can be useful due to UV light’s effect on the production of skin cells. It slows down the growth that plays a major role in the disease’s development.

Ultravioletwaves

Ultraviolet (UV) light falls in the range of the EM spectrum between visible light and X-rays. It has frequencies of about 8 × 1014 to 3 × 1016 cycles per second, or hertz (Hz), and wavelengths of about 380 nanometers (1.5 × 10−5 inches) to about 10 nm (4 × 10−7 inches). According to the U.S. Navy's "Ultraviolet Radiation Guide," UV is generally divided into three sub-bands:

A number of artificial sources have been devised for producing UV radiation. According to the Health Physics Society, "Artificial sources include tanning booths, black lights, curing lamps, germicidal lamps, mercury vapor lamps, halogen lights, high-intensity discharge lamps, fluorescent and incandescent sources, and some types of lasers."

Ultravioletfrequency

When necessary, it's typical to collimate the laser beam through a lens that collects the weakly divergent rays coming from the optical resonator and straightens them, allowing for a longer coherence distance.

Learn how to calculate the spot size of a laser beam with our dedicated tool. Initially, it can look complex, but we will guide you through a detailed explanation of the physics of the problem, teach you how to calculate the laser beam spot size after introducing all the necessary quantities, and end the article with some practical examples.

We are now in the last part of our diagram. The collimated beans reach a lens with focal length(learn what is this quantity with out focal length calculator) fff that focuses the beam in a single, small spot with diameter SSS. We created a new Gaussian beam with all the characteristics of the previous one, just different values. In particular, we have a new waist.

While exposure to UV light can lead to skin cancer, some skin conditions can be treated using UV light, according to Cancer Research UK. In a procedure called psoralen ultraviolet light treatment (PUVA), patients take a drug or apply a lotion to make their skin sensitive to light. Then a UV light is shone on the skin. PUVA is used to treat lymphoma, eczema, psoriasis and vitiligo.

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Right after their emission, laser beams diverge. We talked about this in detail in our laser divergence calculator. Even though the beam is more collimated than one of the other light sources (light bulbs, to name one), thanks to the coherency of the beam, this doesn't prevent the beam spot from spreading after a certain distance.

This equation is straightforward with its implications. The size of the beam spot is directly proportional to the lens's focal length. A shorter focal length makes for a highly focused beam. However, there's a tradeoff: the more focused the beam is, the higher its divergence, and in a short distance past the focal length, the beam would lose its laser properties.

The guide goes on to state, "Radiations with wavelengths from 10 nm to 180 nm are sometimes referred to as vacuum or extreme UV." These wavelengths are blocked by air, and they only propagate in a vacuum.

Ultravioletwavelength

You can increase the depth of focus (hence maintaining a high quality of the beam for a longer distance) by lengthening the lens's focal length. However, as you can see in our calculator, this is detrimental to the size of the spot (which increases).

According to Robert Patterson, a professor of astronomy at Missouri State University, most observations are conducted using charge-coupled devices (CCD), detectors designed to be sensitive to short-wavelength photons. These observations can determine the surface temperatures of the hottest stars and reveal the presence of intervening gas clouds between the Earth and quasars.

Ultravioletuses

Electromagnetic radiation comes from the sun and transmitted in waves or particles at different wavelengths and frequencies. This broad range of wavelengths is known as the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. The spectrum is generally divided into seven regions in order of decreasing wavelength and increasing energy and frequency. The common designations are radio waves,microwaves, infrared (IR), visible light, ultraviolet (UV), X-rays and gamma-rays.

In fluorescent tubes used for lighting, "ultraviolet radiation with a wavelength of 254 nm is produced along with the blue light that is emitted when an electric current is passed through mercury vapor," according to the University of Nebraska. "This ultraviolet radiation is invisible but contains more energy than the visible light emitted. The energy from the ultraviolet light is absorbed by the fluorescent coating inside the fluorescent lamp and re-emitted as visible light." Similar tubes without the same fluorescent coating emit UV light that can be used to disinfect surfaces, since the ionizing effects of UV radiation can kill most bacteria.

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Besides the sun, there are numerous celestial sources of UV radiation. Very large young stars shine most of their light in ultraviolet wavelengths, according to NASA. Because Earth's atmosphere blocks much of this UV radiation, particularly at shorter wavelengths, observations are conducted using high-altitude balloons and orbiting telescopes equipped with specialized imaging sensors and filters for observing in the UV region of the EM spectrum.

A suntan is a reaction to exposure to harmful UVB rays. Essentially, a suntan results from the body's natural defense mechanism kicking in. This consists of a pigment called melanin, which is produced by cells in the skin called melanocytes. Melanin absorbs UV light and dissipates it as heat. When the body senses sun damage, it sends melanin into surrounding cells and tries to protect them from sustaining more damage. The pigment causes the skin to darken.

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Ultraviolet light is a type of electromagnetic radiation that makes black-light posters glow, and is responsible for summer tans — and sunburns. However, too much exposure to UV radiation is damaging to living tissue.

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Ultravioletlight examples

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The spot size of a laser beam cutter ranges from 15 μm to 170 μm (0.003 to 0.007 inches), depending on the lens you are mounting.

To calculate the spot size of a laser beam, you need to know the setup of your optical system. Be sure to know the following:

Lasers are widely used in many fields, from entertainment to medicine, from the military to advanced scientific research. Saying that they lighted the way to see the world with different eyes is not an understatement.

🙋 If you input the correct combination of parameters, you can use our tool in reverse. For example, to find the right lens to achieve a specified spot size.

The result is skin cancer, the most common form of cancer in the United States. People who get sunburned repeatedly are at much higher risk. The risk for the deadliest form of skin cancer, called melanoma, doubles for someone who has received five or more sunburns, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

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