United States of America As Represented by the Secretary of the Air Force

Christopher C Leung

Gordon H Burkhart

Joseph L Levy

John E Jackson

A sliced transform lens is used to combine and focus the optical output signals of a planar M by N laser diode array onto M detector elements in a linear detector by displacing lens slices. A sliced transform lens is used to separate the composite image of the laser diode array on the detector plane into ten spots (400 emitters per spot) by displacing the lens slices relative to each other collimated He-Ne laser beam was used to examine the sliced transform lens and the linear detector array was used to measure the image sizes and the crosstalks between the images. The results show the minimum separation is approximately five detector spacings apart. The lens elements are cut from a bulk material (BK-7) and ground to desired thickness and parallelism. Then the elements are 'glued' together with standard optical wax compound and ground to the prescribed focal length. THe lens slices are cut before grinding, hence the composite lens is symmetric and zero-curf configuration is preserved. This relaxes the collimation requirement of the incoming light to some extent. The lens is then polished and ready for application.

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Ballwin, MO, United States of America

Christopher C Leung