The temperature distribution due to a rotating or dithering Gaussian laser beam on a finite body is obtained numerically. The authors apply various techniques to solve the nonhomogeneous heat equation in different spatial dimensions. The authors' approach includes the Crank-Nicolson method, the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) method and the commercial software COMSOL. It is found that the maximum temperature rise decreases as the frequency of the rotating or dithering laser beam increases and the

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... emperature rise induced by a rotating beam is smaller than the one induced by a dithering beam. The authors' numerical results also provide the asymptotic behavior of the maximum temperature rise as a function of the frequency of a rotating or dithering laser beam.