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:
Oct. 17, 2006
Filed:
Dec. 11, 2003
Lawrence Hakchu Lee, San Jose, CA (US);
John J. Bockman, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Lawrence Hakchu Lee, San Jose, CA (US);
John J. Bockman, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Agilent Technologies, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A phase-compensating cube corner retroreflector includes three rear reflecting surfaces. The first and the third rear reflecting surfaces can be coated with a phase-compensating film stack that induces 2nπ phase difference upon reflection, where n is an integer including 0. Alternatively, all three rear reflecting surfaces can be coated with a phase-compensating film stack that induces nπ phase difference when handling linearly polarized light, or 2nπ phase difference when handling linearly or circularly polarized light. So coated, the phase-compensating cube corner preserves the polarization orientation and ellipticity of the incident light. Such a phase-compensating cube corner can be used to improve the accuracy of distance-measuring interferometers. The cube corner directs light to and from other optical elements, including a polarizing beam-splitters, mirrors, and quarter-wave plates.