Photothermal Common Path Interferometer for High Power Laser Optical Coating Characterization

Abstract

The requested instrumentation is a Photothermal Common Path Interferometer (PCI) that will beused to measure the absorption of multilayer dielectric coatings employed for high power laserweapon systems. PCI is based on a pump/probe technique in which a low power" probe beamsenses the heating effect on an absorbed pump beam. The high power, smaller diameter, pumpbeam is chopped to modulate t""he heating effect at a predetermined frequency, which distorts theprobe beam profile in the central area. This results in a change" in the beam profile fromGaussian due to interference of the distorted and undistorted parts of the probe beam. The setupis illustrated in Figure 1.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Sep 29, 2017
Source ID
N000141712854

Entities

People

  • Jeffery Thomas

Organizations

  • Office of Naval Research
  • Pennsylvania State University
  • United States Navy

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computer Engineering
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Directed Energy - Lasers