Importance

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Abstract

Laser cleaning apparatuses that each focus laser light to have a fluence at a focal plane of output optics that is greater than an ablation threshold of a surface contaminant to be removed from a surface to be cleaned and include a scanning apparatus configured to scan the laser light in at least one dimension across a scan region within the focal plane, thereby causing the scanning laser light to have an effective divergence greater than the divergence of the laser light when stationary, and wherein the resulting effective divergence, the power, the wavelength and the temporal characteristic cause the scanning laser light to have a corresponding safe working distance from the output aperture. In some embodiments, a scan monitoring apparatus is configured to monitor the effective divergence of the scanning laser light and configured to generate an alarm signal in response to determining that the effective divergence has changed.

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First Claim