Rockwell International Corporation

Arthur E Chiou

Pochi A Yeh

Mohsen Khoshnevisan

Tallis Y Chang

A phase conjugate interferometer for combining first and second two dimensional images includes a source of coherent light and a first beam splitter for dividing the coherent light into a transmitted beam and a reflected pump beam. A second beam splitter divides the transmitted beam into a reflected first probe beam which traverses a first image transparency and a transmitted second probe beam which traverses a second image transparency. A nonlinear optical medium receives the reflected pump beam, the first probe beam, and the second probe beam, with the medium, the pump beam, and the probe beams being oriented such that self-pumping of the reflected pump beam produces counterpropagating pump beams, four-wave mixing between the counterpropagating pump beams and the first probe beam produces a phase-conjugated first output beam which traverses the first image transparency, and four-wave mixing between the pump beam and the second probe beam produces a phase-conjugated second output beam which traverses the second image transparency. The second beam splitter, the first output beam, and the second output beam are oriented such that a portion of the first output beam is transmitted by the second beam splitter and combines with a portion of the second output beam reflected by the second beam splitter to produce a combined output beam containing the difference between the intensities of the first and second image transparencies.

High speed photorefractive image comparator

A phase conjugate interferometer includes a source of coherent light and a first beam splitter for dividing the coherent light into a transmitted portion and a reflected portion. A second beam splitter is positioned to divide the transmitted portion into an outgoing transmitted beam and an outgoing reflected beam, with the outgoing transmitted beam oriented to pass through the first image and the outgoing reflected beam oriented to pass through the second image. A phase-conjugate reflector is positioned to reflect the outgoing transmitted beam as a first incoming beam and the outgoing reflected beam as a second incoming beam. The incoming beams are directed toward the second beam splitter, which divides the incoming beams into a first combined beam and a second combined beam. The second combined beam is directed toward the first beam splitter, which divides the second combined beam into a third combined beam and a transmitted beam. With this arrangement, the first combined beam contains the difference between the intensities of the first and second images and the third combined beam contains the sum of the intensities of the first and second images.

Growing community of inventors

Newbury Park, CA, United States of America

Arthur E Chiou