Laser Optics

Prisms are transparent optical devices which refract or reflect light. They have manifold applications in laser technology.

Laser Lenses are used to focus collimated light from laser beams in a variety of laser applications. Laser Lenses include a range of lens types including HGQ Lenses, Cylinder Lenses, or Laser Generator Lenses. Laser Lenseare designed to focus light in several different ways depending on the lens type, such as focusing down to a point,a line, or a ring. Many different lens types are available in a range of wavelengths.

Laser Protect Windows(Laser protective glass, protective filters or welding protective windows) are used to save for the high cost of laser optics.

Laser mirrors are fabricated with specialized coatings, which will offer high damage thresholds.

Co2+:MgAl2O4 Cospinel is a relatively new material for passive Q-switching in lasers emitting from 1.2 to 1.6 μm, in particular, for eye-safe 1.54 μm Er:glass laser, but also works at 1.44 μm and 1.34 μm wavelengths. Spinel is a hard, stable crystal that polishes well. Cobalt substitutes readily for magnesium in the Spinel host without the need for additional charge compensation ions. High absorption cross section (3.5×10-19 cm2) permits Q-switching of Er:glass laser without intracavity focusing both with flash-lamp and diode-laser pumping. Negligible excited-state absorption results in high contrast of Q-switch, i.e. the ratio of initial (small signal) to saturated absorption is higher than 10.

Silicon is used as an optical window primarily in the 3 to 5 micron band and as a subsrate for production of optical filters and windows.     Silicon (Si) is grown by Czochralski pulling techniques (CZ) and contains some oxygen that causes an absorption band at 9 microns. To avoid this, material can be prepared by a Float-Zone (FZ) process. Optical silicon is generally lightly doped (5 to 40 ohm cm) for best transmission above 10 microns, and doping is usually boron (P-type) and phosphorus (N-type). After doping silicon has a further pass band: 30 to 100 microns which is effective only in very high resistivity uncompensated material.    

Nd:GdVO4, is a promising material for diode pumped lasers. Similar to the more well-known Nd:YVO4 crystal, Nd:GdVO4 crystal also exhibits high gain, low threshold, and high absorption coefficients at pumping wavelengths. Nd:GdVO4 has the additional advantage over Nd:YVO4 of a much higher thermal conductivity. For CW lasing at 1.06 um and 1.34 um and intracavity doubling with KTP and LBO, the gadolinium vanadate have produced a higher slope efficiency or optical conversion than Nd:YVO4.

A cylindrical lens is a lens that focuses light on a line instead of a point, like a spherical lens. The curved face or faces of a cylindrical lens are sections of a cylinder, and focus the image passing through it into a line parallel to the intersection of the surface of the lens and a plane tangent to it. The lens compresses the image in the direction perpendicular to this line and leaves it unaltered in the direction parallel to it (in the tangent plane). In a light sheet microscope, a cylindrical lens is placed in front of the illumination objective to create the light sheet used for imaging. Cylindrical lenses focus or expand light in one axis only. They can be used to focus light into a thin line in optical metrology, laser scanning, spectroscopic, laser diode, acousto-optic, and optical processor applications. They can also be used to expand the output of a laser diode into a symmetrical beam. Cylindrical lenses are widely used in telecom applications like WSS, 40G/100G modules and laser applications like pump laser modules