Calculating the beam waist of a Guassian laser beam as a function of propagation distance

Matt Moocarme
23rd August 2015

2 Outline

The geometry and behaviour of a Guassian laser beam can be governed by a set of beam parameters

The Function

beamWidth <- function(w0, wavelength, z) w0*sqrt(1+(z*(wavelength/1e6)/(pi*w0^2))^2)

Examples of Use

w0 = 0.1
wavelength = 532
z = 10
beamWidth(w0, wavelength, z)
## [1] 0.1014237

Why use the App?

The shiny application can be used to easily find the beam width of a Guassian laser beam, common in laboratory experiments. Consequently other useful parameters can be calculated from the beam width, such as the beam intensity, divergence and radius of curvature.

Equation for source Anupam Garg, Classical Electrodynamics in a Nutshell