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:
Jun. 16, 2009
Filed:
Mar. 23, 2004
Sylvain Schwartz, Paris, FR;
Gilles Feugnet, Les Ulis, FR;
Jean-paul Pocholles, La Norville, FR;
Thales, , FR;
Abstract
The field of the invention is that of solid-state laser gyros. One of the major problems inherent in this technology is that the optical cavity of this type of laser is by its nature highly unstable. To reduce this instability, the invention proposes to introduce controlled optical losses into the cavity that depend on the polarization direction by placing in the cavity an optical assembly comprising a polarizing element, a first element exhibiting a reciprocal effect that acts on the polarization of the wave and a second element exhibiting a nonreciprocal effect that also acts on the polarization of the wave, at least one of these two effects being variable, and to electronically slave these losses to the difference in intensity between the counterpropagating modes. Several devices are described that implement either fixed reciprocal effects combined with variable nonreciprocal effects, or vice versa. These devices apply in particular to monolithic cavity lasers and especially to lasers of the neodymium-doped YAG type and also to fiber cavity lasers.