The Fabrication of Affordable Aspheric Mirrors by Electroforming (FAAME) program seeks to lower the cost of aspheric mirrors by developing electroforming processes suitable for optical-quality electroforms. To achieve this goal, two major areas of improvement were pursued: optimizing the electroforming process and utilizing a multi-generational approach. To improve the process, we studied electroforming variables, identifying key factors that affect an electroform's optical quality. Once the factors were identified, the electroforming process was refined, producing mirrors that met the quality goal of 1/4 wave in the infrared. We drew all of this experience together to demonstrate replication of a wildly aspheric mirror for use in a Trans-Atmospheric Interceptor (TAI).
Finding the components of an optical system that are most sensitive to misalignment allows a designer to insulate them from outside perturbations or incorporate compensators to account for alignment errors. At Advanced Optical Systems, Inc. (AOS) we used opto-mechanical constraint (OMC) equations to analyze the misalignment sensitivity of an optical correlator system and develop a better design. The OMC equations provide sensitivity coefficients for each element in the design that can be used to determine which components create the greatest image shift and focus errors when not optimally aligned. The OMC analysis model of the optical correlator was verified using a test bench with lenses in adjustable mounts to induce known amounts of misalignment in multiple axes. The experimental data matched the calculated values for each tested lens. The OMC coefficients assisted in identifying (1) lenses that are sensitive to loose manufacturing tolerances, (2) where subsystem designs can be beneficial, and (3) materials that provide optimum thermal performance. We will show results from our latest optical correlator package built using the OMC model analysis, which was critical to making decisions in the opto-mechanical design state of system development. We will also discuss a MATLAB simulation of AOS' optical correlator that incorporates the opto-mechanical constraints into a digital simulation of the correlation image.
The output from a laser diode is not circularly symmetric, the output divergence in one axis is much greater than that in the transverse axis. MEMS Optical has developed a laser diode circularizer1 that can take the elliptical output beam from a laser diode and circularize the beam. Due to it’s operating principle, it has a major advantage in that precise alignment is not required, making assembly operations much simpler and faster. Due to the ability to manufacture this device in wafer scale, it can be economically manufactured. We report here the results of a series of optical performance measurements, including wavefront phase and Strehl ratio. Designed for a wavelength of 650nm, it has less than 0.05 waves of wavefront error, Strehl ratios as high as 98%, efficiency of 89%, and circularity >0.95. The lenses have low aberrations and high throughput with a circular cross section. These lenses are ideal for use in applications such as optical data storage, fiber coupling, and any application in which degraded performance is due to an elliptical beam.
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