What is meant by Spectral and Spatial Shaping of a laser

[Avardia]

Hi,
I am new to the forum so apologies if I placed this in the wrong subforum though I think the subject is classical enough to be here. I was hoping to get a concise answer to what is meant by spectral and spatial shaping of a laser. My intuition says that we are modifying the amplitude of the laser light with spatial but I'm lost on spectral.

Thank you

 

[.Scott]

Spectral are the frequency components of the laser - so spectral shaping would be any mechanism that filters out unwanted frequencies.

See figures 3 and 4 in this report:
https://integratedoptics.com/spectral-properties-of-cw-lasers


Spatial is the beam pattern - what the beam looks like when projected onto a screen. Normally, you would want that laser to project a simple disk.