A novel geometry for uniform intensity line focus of Gaussian laser beams

Gain measurements in x-ray lasers involves monitoring the intensity of lasing transition as a function of line focus length. Having a line focus of variable length with uniform intensity is important in these measurements. In addition, uniform line focusing of Gaussian laser beams has many other applications in material processing, pumping of dye lasers etc. In this paper, we describe a simple technique using a wedge to displace and overlap two halves of a Gaussian laser beam to obtain a uniform intensity line focus. Variation of the line length at a fixed intensity is facilitated by use of appropriate masks. X-ray emission pictures of a line focused laser produced plasma show the effectiveness of this geometry.