Reduction of Speckle Noise and Mitigation of Beam Wander in Tunable External Cavity Quantum Cascade Lasers Using Rotating Diamond/KBr Pellet Coupled with Multimode Fiber

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate speckle noise reduction and beam wander mitigation by using a rotating diamond/KBr pellet and a multimode fiber (MMF). As the diamond/KBr diffuser is rotated, the reflected speckle images that are captured by an infrared camera are temporally averaged. We demonstrate 78 speckle noise reduction by averaging 25 frames, which is within 80 of the theoretical contrast reduction. Large beam position fluctuations are also significantly suppressed by adding the MMF. This combination of beam wander mitigation and speckle reduction offers significant benefits for emerging optical technologies that use quantum cascade lasers as illumination sources. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 04, 2019
Accession Number
AD1099942

Entities

People

  • Christopher A. Kendziora
  • Christopher J. Breshike
  • Richard A. Mcgill
  • Robert Furstenberg
  • Yohan Yoon

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Background Noise
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Diffusers
  • Filtration
  • Illumination
  • Laser Beams
  • Lasers
  • Light Sources
  • Measurement
  • Microelectromechanical Systems
  • Optics
  • Particle Size
  • Particles
  • Quantum Cascade Lasers
  • Spectroscopy
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Image Processing and Computer Vision.
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Quantum Computing