Hughes Aircraft Company

Richard C Lind

David M Pepper

Thomas R O'Meara

Bernard H Soffer

Ronald Regis Stephens

Huan W Yen

Yuri Owechko

Emanuel Marom

Jar Jar Lee

David Alan Rockwell

Gregory L Tangonan

Hans W Bruesselbach

Willie W Ng

Irwin L Newberg

Uzi Efron

Gilmore Joseph Dunning

Richard L Abrams

Marvin B Klein

Monica L Minden

Michael Wechsberg

Concetto R Giuliano

Richard R Craig

Andrew A Walston

Davis A Rockwell

Optoelectronic switching apparatus employing optoelectronic switching devices interconnected by optical media having different delay lengths and an multiport optical coupler. The optoelectronic switching apparatus provides for a multibit true-time-delay beamsteerer for beamsteering phased array antennas. The present invention combines two types of optoelectronic devices, lasers and photodiode switches, using an interconnected passive optical network comprising the optical fibers and the optical coupler. The switches, and input and output signal networks coupled to the respective switches, are controlled using a control signal generator. Using this scheme, any input can be independently selected and a signal can be routed to any output. Furthermore, the product of the total number of different interconnect paths (N.times.M) is provided which provides a greater number of delay lengths than is provided by using only one type of switch (i.e. laser (N) or photodiode (M)) alone. The present invention also provides for improved insertion loss while increasing the number of delay paths.

Optoelectronic multibit beamsteering switching apparatus

Apparatus for compensating for inherent distortions in a modified liquid crystal light valve used in an integrated wavefront sensing and wavefront control system for laser optics. A main wavefront sensing and control system utilizes a liquid crystal light valve selected for response speed but having inherent surface non-linearities. A beam from an auxiliary laser is intermittently applied, while the main laser is blocked, to both the fast response LCLV of the main system and to a slower response LCLV of an associated correction system. The second LCLV system corrects for the non-linearities in the surface of the first LCLV and then maintains the stored correction signal for a decay interval which corresponds to several response times of the main LCLV, thus permitting the main LCLV system to perform fast correction of atmospheric aberrations in the laser beam wavefront unaffected by inherent surface non-linearities.

Method for adaptive correction of the phase non-uniformity of a liquid

A coherent input beam from a laser is fed into a Brillouin-enhanced four wave mixer which generates a phase conjugated seed beam in counterpropagation with the input beam. A brillouin amplifier is provided between the laser and four wave mixer to transfer energy from the input beam to the seed beam and thereby amplify the seed beam to produce a phase conjugated output beam with approximately 50% of the energy of the input beam and narrow bandwidth which is free from random phase jumps associated with the acoustic noise generally required to initiate and sustain stimulated Brillouin scattering. The phase conjugated output beam can be modulated or steered in direction, as desired. Reference beams for the four wave mixer may be derived from the same laser source as the input beam and have energies one or more orders of magnitude smaller than the energy of the input beam.

Bandwidth-preserving brillouin phase conjugate mirror and method

A four-pass conjugate optical amplifier system and method are disclosed in which a linear polarized optical beam is directed by various optical elements through four passes of a power amplifier, preferably a diode laser structure. The beam is phase conjugated at the optical midpoint between the second and third amplifying passes, and is controlled by the optical elements so that its polarization is substantially the same during the first and second passes, and again substantially the same during the third and fourth amplifying passes. This is accomplished by a reflective coating on the back facet of the diode laser structure, with a non-reciprocal polarization rotation element located in the beam path between the phase conjugate mirror and power amplifier. For considerably enhanced power amplification, the beam may be divided into an array of subbeams, which are individually amplified by four passes through respective power amplifiers. The subbeams are processed by the optical system so that they recombine into a single coherent output beam after full amplification.

Four-pass phase conjugate optical amplifier system and method

A laser apparatus (10) has a coherent master oscillator radiation source (30) for driving a plurality of laser gain elements (20) positioned in a operationally parallel configuration so as to receive unamplified radiation (40) from master oscillator (30) and transmitting amplified radiation (44). Input means (60) couples portion of radiation (40) from master oscillator to each of said gain elements (20). Phase conjugate reflector means (80) operatively coupled to gain elements (20) reflects the phase conjugate of amplified radiation (44) back into the gain elements (20) where it is further amplified. Output coupling means (90) couples amplified radiation from the plurality of gain elements (20) out of the laser apparatus as a single coherent output beam of radiation.

Energy scalable laser amplifier

Associative holography memory apparatus is disclosed which employs a hologram and two phase conjugate mirrors. The mirrors are arranged to form a conjugate resonator whereby the output image from the apparatus tends to converge to that stored image most closely associated with an input image. Alternate embodiments are described which employ a multiple storage and erasure hologram, and which employ only a single phase conjugate mirror.

Associative holographic memory apparatus employing phase conjugate

A phase conjugate resonator (PCR) employing at least one phase conjugate mirror (PCM) provides high resolution spatial detection of individual locations in a two-dimensional optical array which exceed or fall below a threshold level. In one embodiment the optical intensity profile under investigation is imposed either onto one or both of the pump beams of a degenerate four-wave mixing PCM. In another embodiment a pair of PCMs are used as the two mirrors forming the PCR, with the pump beams for one PCM modulated and the pump beams for the other PCM serving as a threshold reference. In either case, the spatially modulated optical output may be read out with multiple detectors or an imaging system, or the cumulative area output of the PCR can be read out with a single detector to characterize the intensity profile relative to the threshold.

Apparatus and method for spatial intensity threshold detection

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Woodland Hills, CA, United States of America

Richard C Lind