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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Ultra High Density Spectral Beam Combining By Thermal Tuning Of Volume Bragg Gratings In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass, Derrek Drachenberg
Ultra High Density Spectral Beam Combining By Thermal Tuning Of Volume Bragg Gratings In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass, Derrek Drachenberg
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
High power lasers with diffraction limited beam quality are desired for many applications in defense and manufacturing. A lot of applications require laser beams at the 100 kW power level along with divergence close to the diffraction limit. The figure of merit for a beam used in such applications should be radiance which determines the laser power delivered to a remote target. One of the primary limiting factors is thermal distortion of a laser beam caused by excessive heat generated in the laser media. Combination of multiple laser beams is usually considered as a method to mitigate these limitations. Spectral …
Theoretical Study Of Beam Transformations By Volume Diffraction, Sergiy V. Mokhov
Theoretical Study Of Beam Transformations By Volume Diffraction, Sergiy V. Mokhov
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Laser beams can be manipulated by volume diffractive elements in addition to conventional optical elements like mirrors, lenses, and beam splitters. Conventional optical elements can be described by applying the basic laws of reflection and refraction at the surfaces of the elements. Even diffraction by surface gratings utilizes relatively simple mathematics. This is to be contrasted with the volume diffraction, which requires coupled wave theory in the slowly varying envelope approximation (SVEA) to obtain accurate results. Efficient spatially distributed diffraction of laser beams is possible due to the high coherence of laser light, and it occurs at specific resonant Bragg …
Thermally Activated, Variable Blazed Grating For Coherent Beam Steering, Matthew T. Johnson
Thermally Activated, Variable Blazed Grating For Coherent Beam Steering, Matthew T. Johnson
Theses and Dissertations
The ability to perform non-mechanical optical beam steering is of critical importance in laser communication and remote sensing; it is as vital as a phased-array antenna is for RADAR. Directed energy transmission and direction-selective reception increase performance and produce tactical advantage in DoD applications. However, specific geometric features of non-mechanical beam steering devices must be designed in proportion to the wavelength of the monochromatic light to be steered. Also, the ability to handle higher energies by reducing the energy per unit requires large areas of uniform properties on the micrometer scale. These challenges have been addressed in the past using …