Lightwave Electronics Corporation

Lightwave Electronics Co.

David G Scerbak

John A Dutcher

Leonard P Pearson

Richard W Wallace

William M Grossman

Robert L Mortensen

An optical Faraday isolator includes a slab of Faraday rotator medium coated to define input and output faces and internal reflective surfaces for causing the beam to travel between the input and output faces along a zig-zag path. Permanent magnets polarized in a direction normal to the plane defined by the zig-zag beam path are disposed on opposite sides of the beam path. The magnets are paired on each side with serially alternating polarity and the like poles are in transverse registration on opposite sides of the beam path to produce an intense, unidirectional magnetic field parallel to the beam path within the rotator slab. A quarterwave plate introduces a compensating amount of elliptical polarization to cancel unwanted elliptical polarization effects of the slab and its coatings. A beam shaving aperture at the exit of the slab shaves off divergent backward travelling rays.

Optical isolator employing multipass faraday rotation

A diode pumped Nd:YAG laser is disclosed wherein the YAG laser rod is supported from the envelope of the pumping diode by means of telescoping glass tubes bonded together by means of u.v. curing adhesive. The diode pumped laser is supported from a heat sink via the intermediary of a pair of rotatable wedges for adjusting the tilt of the optical axis of the laser. A gradient refractive index lens focuses the pump radiation into the laser rod. The lens is adhered directly to the output window of the pump diode by means of refractive index matching adhesive.

Diode pumped solid state laser

A seeded electro-optically Q-switches laser includes a pulser for pulsing the Q-switch within the seeded laser. The Q-switch pulser includes a pulse-shaping network having a saturable core inductor connected in series with the flow of current to the Q-switch for causing the developed pulse voltage waveform in Q-switch to have an initially reduced rate of change to reduce unwanted Fourier frequency components of the seed optical radiation in the optical resonator of the slave laser, whereby enhanced single-mode operation of the slave laser is obtained with reduced seed power.

Pulse shaper for an electro-optically Q-switched seeded laser

A diode pumped Nd:YAG laser is disclosed. The YAG rod is coated on its ends to define an optical resonator containing the YAG rod. The YAG rod is made sufficiently short, i.e., 1 mm, so that it will support only two axial resonant (lasing) modes. The rod is transversely stressed to polarize the two original modes and to excite a third lasing mode orthogonally polarized to the first two modes. The third mode is separated from the first two modes to provide stable, single mode TEM.sub.001 output. The transverse stress is applied by means of a spring clamp made of a material, Be-Cu, having a low temperature coefficient.

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Morgan Hill, CA, United States of America

David G Scerbak