Beam expanders are used in laser physics either as intracavity or extracavity elements. They can be telescopic in nature or prismatic. Generally prismatic beam expanders use several prisms and are known as multiple-prism beam expanders.

Telescopic beam expanders include refracting and reflective telescopes. A refracting telescope commonly used is the Galilean telescope which can function as a simple beam expander for collimated light. When used as intracavity beam expanders, in laser resonators, these telescopes provide two-dimensional beam expansion in the 20–50 range.

In tunable laser resonators intracavity beam expansion usually illuminates the whole width of a diffraction grating. Thus beam expansion reduces the beam divergence and enables the emission of very narrow linewidths which is a desired feature for many analytical applications including laser spectroscopy.

Multiple-prism beam expanders usually deploy two to five prism to yield large one-dimensional beam expansion factors. Designs applicable to tunable lasers with beam expansion factors of up to 200 have been disclosed in the literature. Initially multiple-prism grating configurations were introduced in narrow-linewidth liquid dye lasers but eventually were also adopted in gas, solid-state, and diode laser designs. The generalized mathematical description of multiple-prism beam expanders, introduced by Duarte, is known as the multiple-prism dispersion theory.