The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 29, 1981
Filed:
Apr. 08, 1980
David M Pepper, Los Angeles, CA (US);
Marvin B Klein, Malibu, CA (US);
Hughes Aircraft Company, Culver City, CA (US);
Abstract
Optical devices are disclosed which rely upon Stark-induced resonant, tunable, and saturable birefringence and dichroism to provide both digital and linear amplitude optical modulators, optical shutters, tunable optical filters, and optical cutoff limiters. A Stark cell is disposed along a light beam path between two crossed polarizers with its electric field direction at 45.degree. to the polarizer pass directions. The Stark cell contains a medium exhibiting a dichroic absorption resonance at a predetermined frequency as well as birefringence at frequencies slightly above and slightly below the frequency of the absorption resonance. By applying an appropriate control voltage between the Stark cell electrodes, an electric field is generated within the Stark cell to tune the absorption resonance to overlap the frequency of an input laser beam and thereby vary the transmission through the device from maximum near resonance to zero at frequencies far away from resonance.