Boeing North American, Inc.

Charles E Greninger

An actuator for continuously aligning the primary mirror relative to the scraper the other resonator mirrors and the feedback mirror in a high power laser resonator, comprised of extended portions of the resonators primary mirror, feedback mirror and scraper mirror for a low power laser beam to travel parallel to but offset from the high power laser beam for aligning the mirrors. The low power laser beam is used to measure the position of the mirrors in the resonator. The low power beam is split into a beam which is incident on a quadrant cell for measuring the tip and tilt of the feedback mirror relative to the primary mirror and a beam which measures the translation of the feedback mirror relative to the primary mirror. A controller receives the data form the quadrant cells and sends signals to actuators on one mirror to move it relative to the other thus keeping the mirrors in constant alignment. The alignment beam is also split at the scraper mirror forming a surrogate beam which may be used to simulate the extracted high power beam. The surrogate beam may be used for targeting where the high power beam will go.

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Canoga Park, CA, United States of America

Charles E Greninger