综述了现有的3类激光光束质量评价方法,即近场质量、远场质量和传输质量。主要的评价参数包括近场调制度和对比度、聚焦光斑尺寸、远场发散角、衍射极限倍数β因子、斯特列尔比、环围能量比以及M^2因子等。讨论了它们各自的适用范围、优点和局限性。提出了采用M^2因子矩阵以表述光束的像散特性,给出了M^2因子的不变量。
Three types of evaluation on laser beam quality such as near-field quality, far-field quality, and propagation quality are summarized. The parameters include modulation ratio and contrast ratio of near-field, focused spot size, far-field divergence angle, times diffraction limited factor β, Strehl rate, energy circle rate, M^2 factor, etc. The application range, strong point and shortcoming of them especially used in evaluating beam quality of high power laser beam are discussed. Furthermore, a matrix of M^2 factor for comprehensive evaluating astigmatic beam has been proposed, and the invariant value is given.