When CW laser is irradiated on a semiconductor film while being relatively
scanned in a fabrication process of a semiconductor device, many crystal
grains extending in a scanning direction are formed. The semiconductor
film irradiated in this way has characteristics substantially approximate
to those of a single crystal in the scanning direction. However, because
productivity and uniformity of laser annealing are low, mass-production
is difficult. A plurality of laser beams is processed into linear beams
and is allowed to possess mutually superposing portions to form a more
elongated linear beam and to thus improve productivity. The linear beams
the overlapping to one another have a positional relation satisfying a
predetermined limitation formula, and uniformity of laser annealing can
be remarkably improved.