System for laser-based digital marking of objects with images or digital image projection with the laser beam shaped and amplified to have uniform irradiance distribution over the beam cross-section

A laser image amplification based optical system comprising:

• a laser apparatus configured 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 light 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 configured to control a quality of the optical pattern;
• and
• a uniformity maintaining optical amplifier coupled to the spatial 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;
• wherein the optical-conditioning system is configured 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.