US Government As Represented by the Secretary of the Army

Other

The United States of America As Represented by the Department of Health

Dallas N Barr

John E Nettleton

Brian C Redman

Bradley W Schilling

Clifton S Fox

Lew Goldberg

Jonathan S Lei

Charlie W Trussell

John M Hall

Richard A Utano

Brian J Cole

James D Habersat

Michael M Quarles

Jay A Fox

Brian W Thomas

Elmer C Sluss

A monoblock laser cavity incorporates optical components for a short-pulse laser. These optical components are 'locked' into alignment forming an optical laser cavity for flash lamp or diode laser pumping. The optical laser cavity does not need optical alignment after it is fabricated, increasing the brightness of the monoblock laser.

Beam quality of the monoblock laser through use of a 1.5 micron external cavity partial reflector

A method and device for reducing the timing jitter in a passive Q-switched Nd:YAG solid state laser by spatially selective bleaching a thin sheet of a saturable absorber of Cr:YAG from a direction orthogonal to the direction of laser emission where the Cr:YAG transmission increases 18% when the bleaching probe beam is a single laser diode bar. For steady state operation of a passive Q-switched laser, the pulse-to-pulse timing jitter showed a &#x2212;12&#xd7; reduction in standard deviation from 241 nsec for free running operation to 20 nsec with optical triggering.

Reduction of timing jitter in a passive Q-switched solid state laser

A laser gain medium crystal comprising a square rod of laser gain medium material having top and bottom surfaces that are finely ground to introduce scattering surfaces to cancel parasitic lasing. The square rod of laser gain material has input and output faces and side surfaces, and portions of the side surfaces near the output face of the square rod are finely ground to introduce scattering surfaces to cancel parasitic lasing. The rest of the side surfaces of the square rod are polished.

Suppression of parasitic lasing

A system and method for registering 3D data sets is disclosed based on manual fiducial selection. The technique is useful in imaging obscured targets with 3-D imaging laser radars. For such an exemplary method, which defines a three-dimensional linear shift vector for each data voxel, four fiducials are required to completely define the mapping for a 3D space. An exemplary registration algorithm as disclosed provides an approach to automatically make fine adjustments to the 3D data registration. The tedious technique of shifting data sets relative to each other, in many degrees of freedom, is eliminated. Instead, a fine adjust is applied to the digital mapping function, through fiducial perturbation.

Digital registration of 3D laser radar data based on manually selected fiducials

A process for optically aligning a laser rangefinder that includes the steps of providing a laser rangefinder having a laser source, a photodetector lens and a photodetector, providing a fiber optic travel path, aligning the laser source to the fiber optic travel path, illuminating the photodetector with a light source, focusing the photodetector lens, coupling the fiber optic travel path to an optical light source, and aligning the fiber optic light relative to the photodetector.

Process to optically align a photoreceiver with a laser transmitter source in a laser rangefinder system

A monoblock laser cavity includes a plurality of discrete optical components disposed serially on a substrate and sharing a common optical axis. The optical components include a laser rod of gain material, a Q-switch, an OPO crystal, and an output coupler. The output coupler has at least one convex end face to improve the beam quality.

Unstable monoblock laser cavity

A monoblock laser cavity includes a plurality of discrete optical components disposed serially on a substrate and sharing a common optical axis. The optical components include a laser rod of gain material, a Q-switch, an OPO crystal, an output coupler, and a positive lens. The output coupler has a convex input end face and a concave output end face, and acts as the expanding lens element of a beam expander, and the positive lens completes the beam expander to improve the beam quality.

Unstable monoblock laser cavity with integrated beam expander

The laser obstacle avoidance device of the present invention includes an optical head which includes a laser source which produces a laser signal, crossed cylindrical lenses and through which the laser signal is transmitted, a transceiver including a receiving lens through which a reflected laser signal is received by the transceiver, a receiver and a line filter through which the reflected laser signal is filtered, and scanners which receive the reflected laser signal; and control electronics optically connected to the optical head, wherein the control electronics comprise scanner driver electronics, range processor electronics, power converters, and a display all which produce an x-y display of the terrain scanned by the laser signal wherein the X-axis is driven by a scanner position output and the Y-axis by range data. The system was designed to avoid hazards with emphasis simplicity and low cost. The device has been employed in the field to collect data from natural and man-made objects. A simple, single scan line, range discontinuity detection program has been written and tested. The next step in the process is to interface the output of the processor with driver's display indicating the location of the potential hazard for the operator's closer scrutiny.

Laser obstacle avoidance apparartus

A multi-function combat laser is described that uses single or multiple laser sources (laser diodes) in a configuration such that when it is coupled with a dichroic substrate the laser sources outputs are coupled to produce a single desired output. The multi-function combat laser consolidates multiple laser functions for the dismounted soldier into a single package with shared power supplies, optics and laser sources.

Multi-function combat laser for the dismounted soldier

The End Pumped Slab Laser Cavity incorporates all optical components required for a short-pulse laser. These optical components are 'locked' into alignment forming an optical laser cavity for diode laser or flash lamp pumping. The optical laser cavity never needs optical alignment after it is fabricated. The cavity is configured for optimal absorbtion for diode laser end-pumping over broad temperature ranges.

End pumped slab laser cavity

A one piece laser assembly including a rod of gain medium with one end-face bonded to a broad end-face on a stack of optical wafers that process light differently and mirrors plated on the remaining exposed end-faces of the rod and the stack of wafers.

Monolithic solid state laser assembly and method of manufacture

A laser cavity assembly for high power optical range-finders consisting of two rods of lasing material co-axially mounted on a thin substrate of the same or thermally equivalent material, selected end-faces of the rods being bonded to layers or wafers of optical materials chosen from a group consisting of materials used in Q-switches, filters, matching transformers, linear polarizers and reflecting mirrors.

A subassembly for a high powered light pumped, Q-switched and linearly polarized laser with an optical parametric oscillator, the subassembly consisting of two or three rod shaped elements having precisely ground endfaces with selected coatings mounted on a special pallet that at least partially aligns the optical axes of the elements.

Pseudo-monolithic laser with an intracavity optical parametric oscillator

An optical assembly using a centrally-obscured catadioptric optical objece that provides two different focal planes using the same set of optics. Both optical paths share the same optic axis and common line-of-sight. One focal plane is optimized for use with a high performance GEN II image intensifier tube, and the other is used for either laser receiver or emitter devices.

Growing community of inventors

Woodbridge, VA, United States of America

Dallas N Barr