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:
Jul. 18, 1995
Filed:
Dec. 23, 1993
David A Rockwell, Santa Monica, CA (US);
Metin S Mangir, Santa Monica, CA (US);
Hughes Aircraft Company, Los Angeles, CA (US);
Abstract
Laser beam speckle effects are mitigated by frequency chirping a single-mode laser beam, reflecting it off a speckling surface, and then integrating the reflected beam over at least one chirp period. The speckle reduction is comparable to the use of a multi-longitudinal mode beam having a bandwidth similar to the chirped frequency excursion, while leaving the beam compatible with nonlinear optical processes that are not compatible with multi-longitudinal mode beams. Where the nonlinear process is stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) phase conjugation, the beam can be chirped at a rate up to the order of ##EQU1## where .DELTA..nu..sub.B is the gain bandwidth and L is the effective SBS interaction length of the phase conjugator, and C is the speed of light. Other nonlinear processes with which the beam may be used include harmonic generation and Raman-based beam cleanup or wavelength conversion.