Lockheed Martin Corporation

Coherent Technologies, Inc.

AnnMarie Oien

Duane Donald Smith

Joseph C Marron

Carl W Embry

Glenn Taylor Bennett

J Alex Thomson

Samuel G L Williams

Timothy William Monarski

James Pete Tucker

An imaging method and associated system for producing high-resolution images. The method includes illuminating an object or scene with coherent radiation such as beams from a laser and then, collecting scattered light with a plurality of subapertures rather than a single large aperture. The method continues with coherently detecting, such as with heterodyne detection, the scattered light to measure the complex amplitude incident on each subaperture and digitally reconstructing images from the coherently detected light for the subapertures. Then digital co-phasing is performed on the subapertures using an image sharpness or quality metric to form an image having the resolution of the total subaperture area. The method may also include determining an aimpoint in the formed image, calculating a phase screen, directing laser beams through the subapertures towards the aimpoint, and co-phasing the laser beams by applying the phase screen to form a single beam.

Compensated coherent imaging for improved imaging and directed energy weapons applications

A noncollinear pumped solid state Raman laser or amplifier has a pump laser that transversely or noncollinearly pumps a solid state Raman gain material, with an intensity sufficient to produce a stimulated Raman laser output beam. The pump beam and the Raman beam are noncollinear when the Raman beam travels completely across the pump beam within the Raman gain material, or where the Raman beam completely separates physically, at some location in the pumped Raman gain material, from a virtual beam, which is collinear to the pump beam axis, and which has the same entrance spot size and beam divergence as the Raman beam. The device enhances the pump laser beam spatial homogenization to improve the wavefront smoothness and propagation performance from the pump beam to the Raman beam. Other configurations of the device have a plurality of mirrors, or prisms to fold the pump beam to cause the pump beam to pass through the Raman material a plurality of times, which increases the energy transferred from the pump beam to the Raman beam.

Noncollinearly pumped solid state Raman laser

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Boulder, CO, United States of America

AnnMarie Oien