Gooch and Housego Plc

University of Glasgow

Peter Edward MacKay

Christopher N Pannell

Sonja Franke-Arnold

Jonathan Gavin Ironside-Smith

Neal Matthew Radwell

A cone-based polarizer includes a beam splitter including a front side (FS) and a back side (BS) part for receiving a first and a second beam portion, respectively. The FS part includes two prisms including parallel first and second FS hypotenuses, and the BS part includes two prisms including parallel first and second BS hypotenuses. A first TIR cone is on top and a second TIR cone is on a bottom of the beam splitter. The first and second TIR cones are aligned to have an essentially common cone axis direction and are configured to add a structured polarization upon retroreflecting. The first and second FS hypotenuses have a FS TIR interface in-between and are angled at about 45 degrees relative to the cone axis direction. The first and second BS hypotenuses have a BS TIR interface in-between and are angled at about 90 degrees relative to the FS hypotenuses.

Dual cone-based polarizer

A thermally compensated optical device includes in an optical path an input linear polarizer for transmitting linearly polarized light from a received light beam at a design wavelength. A composite reciprocal rotator includes a first reciprocal material and at least a second reciprocal material provides a reciprocal rotation having a temperature coefficient for reciprocal rotation (tempco). At least one Faraday rotator provides a non-reciprocal rotation having a temperature coefficient for non-reciprocal rotation (tempco). An output linear polarizer transmits forward light received after transmission by the Faraday rotator. At a design temperature, the tempcoand tempcohave opposite signs and can have magnitudes that match within 50%.

Growing community of inventors

Somerset, United Kingdom

Peter Edward MacKay