Progress in Optics

This volume contains six review articles on diverse topics that have become of particular interest to optical scientists and optical engineers in recent years. The first article, by N. Davidson and N. Bokor, reviews researches on the anamorphic shaping of laser beams and of diffuse light whose input or output is substantially elongated along one direction. Such elongated beams have come to be of special interest in recent years with the appearance of high-power laser diode bars, whose excellent properties are offset by their poor beam quality and by the fact that the output beam profile is highly anamorphic (with typical aspect ratio 1000 : 1) and hence unsuitable for many applications. Several techniques have been developed to collimate and shape the output beams of such laser diode bars into symmetric spots. Anamorphic beam shaping has also been used to concentrate symmetrical fields such as solar radiation into very narrow lines, for use in heating water pipes, for s