Beam profilometers provide at-a-glance diagnosis of laser or resonator optics problems. Beam profilometry provides real-time laser beam viewing while the system remains fully enclosed. You can use beam analyzers to perform computations that can quantify beam changes over time.
The beam profilometry process
A typical beam profilometer uses a photo-luminescent crystal as a detector. A small fraction of the laser beam is deflected into the crystal for measurement. The intensity of fluorescent emissions by the crystal is proportional to the intensity of the UV light hitting it, so the crystal creates a visible image analog to the spatial intensity profile of the beam.
By relaying this image to a CCD camera, the beam profile can be digitized and processed by a video image processor that serves as the beam analyzer. The processed image typically consists of a false color intensity map or 3-D histogram.