Litel Instruments

James Wilkinson

Adlai H Smith

A beam scanning system and attached system of beam stabilization is utilized for ensuring the parallel transport of a scanned orthogonally deflected coherent light beam. A first scanning stage with right angle reflecting mirror scans the beam in the X-direction and reflects the scanned beam to the Y-direction. A second scanning stage with right angle reflecting mirror is mounted to the first scanning stage. This second scanning stage deflects the scanning beam in the Y-direction and reflects the beam downward. The scanning beam has divided out a small portion thereof as a reference beam. This reference beam is then diverted to precisely opposite orthogonal paths to the incidence of the scanning beam. The precise opposite orthogonal reference path results in upward deflection of the reference beam. After upward deflection, the reference beam is reflected at an optical flat and reflected back through the reference path. After retracing the orthogonal reference legs, the beam is diverted to a quad detector. Beam excursion at the quad detector measures departure from true parallel transport to produce a signal for driving a single steerable mirror in X and Y deflection on incidence to the scanning system. An alternate embodiment is disclosed utilizing reflection of a portion of the incident scanning beam with reflection preferably at the large area phase mask. The preferred embodiment uses a CW laser parallel to the scanned beam as the reference beam.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

James Wilkinson