On Wednesday, 11 June 2025, at 12:55 EST, Dirk Hauschild, Senior Strategic Marketing Expert at Focuslight, is delivering an online presentation at the Photonics Spectra Laser Optics Summit with the topic “Next Level Beam Shaping And Beam Delivery Micro-Optics With Optimized Functional Surfaces For High Energy Applications”.

The continuous power and energy scaling of single and multi-cavity lasers opens new fields of applications in research and industry. To achieve a reliable performing optical system, the surface quality, coatings and materials should withstand the energy flux through all material interfaces in the beam path without spontaneous or continuous degradation.

Surface defects, anisotropic material, geometric tension, absorption and resulting deformation and thermal lensing could decrease the lifetime of the optics. In more complex optical systems like lithography, laser fusion or laser materials processing systems, the successful operation is directly linked to the uptime and related preventive service intervals or even service free operation over the entire lifetime of the system.

We are presenting new functional surfaces for beam shaping of high energy lasers with ultra-precision polished surface quality and low stress surface shapes that can be combined with AR thin-film coatings or AR nano structures to achieve highest damage threshold in comparison with other micro-optics production technologies. Beside the optimization processes to reduce the defect density and defect size with a geometry neutral polishing approach, we are also show resulting LIDT tests and damage threshold tests that give an indication about addressable energy densities and applications with continuous operating and pulsed laser sources. In addition to our state-of-the-art homogenization and beam shaping micro-optics, we are also show latest results in beam splitting and beam combing with analog phase gratings with advanced surface quality and high transmission coatings and nanostructured surfaces to bring beam shaping technologies also into kW and kJ laser applications.

With over 30 years of optics designing and manufacturing experience, Focuslight continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in laser optics to meet the ever-increasing power and precision demands of future laser systems. As the laser industry evolves, Focuslight remains committed to be the one-stop shop delivering optical solutions that are not only high-performing but scalable, robust, and reliable for next-generation high-energy laser platforms.

Speaker:

Dirk Hauschild is Senior Strategic Marking Expert at Focuslight Technologies Inc. with 30+ year’s experiences in the design, development and integration of micro-optical components and systems to enable photonics based advanced solutions and technologies. He has an engineering degree from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, with focus on generation and guiding of photons to drive current and coming generations of photonic applications and technologies.