A laser beam profile is produced to identify spatial characteristics that predict the propagation, quality, and utility of a laser beam. These spatial characteristics include beam width, divergence, and direction. This is important for manufacturers of products that utilize lasers as the core technology. Applications in the medical and industrial fields often require laser sources as tools, and these lasers must be analyzed and well understood. Products designed for laser printing, welding, cutting, and fiber optics require information about the efficiency, power, special distribution, and uniformity of the beam.

A beam profile such as this would provide the user with information to predict the quality of the laser beam.

SUI (Sensors Unlimited, Inc.) produces the ideal InGaAs detector for profiling lasers in the range of 0.9 to 1.7 µm. SUI's 25 µm square pixel cameras can produce high resolution imagery with a linear power response. Variable gain and programmable integration time enables an enormous dynamic range for the most demanding beam profile analysis. High speed windowing cameras are also available from SUI that produce a digital output of over 15,000 frames per second in a 16 x 16 pixel window, enabling the time resolved monitoring of variations in the laser's output.