Gauss to top-hat beam shaping with aspheres

For practical application of refractive laser beam shapers it is of major interest to know the required manufacturing specifications to fabricate the particular elements, so that an appropriate quality of the top-hat beam profile can be achieved. It is subject of the present paper to analyze a refractive Gauss-to-Top-Hat beam shaper, especially to simulate the as-built performance by applying different interferometric data. Furthermore the stability of the beam shaping system is considered by investigating the effects of deviations from the actual optical design conditions. As a result valuable statements on the manufacturing requirements of the aspheric lenses for beam shaping can be made.