Patent ID: 9570874
Date: 2017-02-14
CPC Classifications: B41J,B41M,G02B,H01S

Claim:
1. An optical image amplification system comprising: a laser apparatus to supply a laser beam having a non-Gaussian irradiance distribution over a beam cross-section, wherein the non-Gaussian irradiance distribution of the laser beam comprises a substantially uniform irradiance distribution over the beam cross-section; a spatial light modulator optically coupled to receive the laser beam, wherein the spatial ht modulator is controlled to generate an output laser beam comprising an optical pattern across the beam cross-section to perform a laser material processing operation to mark a target object with an image or a pattern; an optical-conditioning system to capture a propagating diffracted beam of the optical pattern and to form at least one of a magnified version and a demagnified version of the optical pattern and to control a quality of the optical pattern; a uniformity maintaining optical amplifier coupled to the spatial light modulator to receive the laser beam output from the spatial light modulator and generate an amplified laser beam such that a final optical pattern is an amplified version of the optical pattern as generated by the spatial light modulator, the amplified laser beam from the optical amplifier having a substantially uniform amplification across the cross-section of the beam, thereby the amplified beam maintaining the substantially uniform irradiance distribution over its beam cross-section; and at least one of a time-bandwidth pulse duration control mechanism comprising at least one of a pulse stretching element and a pulse compression element, and a frequency conversion device to convert the amplified laser beam and the optical pattern to a different frequency; wherein at least one of the light temporal duration pulse stretching element and the compression element is provided at least one of between any elements of the optical-conditioning system, between any element of the overall optical image amplification system, and between the optical image amplification system and a subsequent image frequency conversion system.