Coherent beam combination of an optical array using adaptive fiber optics collimators

A novel adaptive-fiber-optics-collimator (AFOC) compensating both piston-type and tip/tilt-type phase errors of output beam is introduced, and has been employed in experiments of coherent beam combination (CBC) of a delta distributed fiber array. Feedback control is realized using stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm. Excellent CBC effect has been achieved when piston and tip/tilt errors among beamlets corrected. The necessity of wavefront tip/tilt control in CBC is verified. Experimental results exhibit great potential applications of this kind of AFOC in fiber amplifier arrays.     

Effective Rayleigh range of Gaussian array beams propagating through atmospheric turbulence

The analytical expressions for the effective Rayleigh range z_R of Gaussian array beams in turbulence for both coherent and incoherent combinations are derived. It is shown that z_R of Gaussian array beams propagating through atmospheric turbulence depends on the strength of turbulence, the array beam parameters and the type of beam combination. For the coherent combination z_R decreases due to turbulence. However, for the incoherent combination there exists a maximum of z_R as the strength of turbulence varies. The z_R of coherently combined Gaussian array beams is larger than that of incoherently combined Gaussian array beams, but for the coherent combination case z_R is more sensitive to turbulence than that for the incoherent combination case. The larger the beam number is, the longer z_R is, and the more z_R is affected by turbulence. For the coherent combination z_R is not monotonic versus the relative beam separation distance, and the effect of turbulence on z_R is appreciable within a certain range of the relative beam separation distance.     

Point-diffraction interferometer for atmospheric adaptive optics in strong scintillation

This paper evaluates the performance of a point-diffraction interferometer for closed-loop adaptive optics. A point-diffraction interferometer was built using a modified Mach-Zehnder set-up. The system was used in closed-loop using a SLM to implement a square, 12 × 12, piston-only segmented corrector with a stroke of ±π. Its performance was tested for the case of atmospheric turbulence aberrations. The investigation showed, through simulation and experiment, that the point-diffraction interferometer worked in closed-loop operation in both uniform intensity and scintillated aberrations. Its robustness in the presence of phase discontinuities makes it a promising option for wavefront sensing in strong scintillation.     

基于目标在回路的三路光纤传输激光相干合成实验

实验验证了一种利用目标回光在远场实现相干合成的技术——目标在回路技术.建立了目标在回路相干合成的物理模型,利用可同时调整光程和光束倾斜的自适应光纤光源准直器,同时补偿合成光束间的平移和倾斜相差,实现了基于目标在回路的三路光纤传输激光间相干合成,获得了接近理想情况的合成效果.文章为在实际大气环境中实现多路相干组束的长距离传输提供了参考.     

自适应光学系统测试中大气湍流的时域模拟

建立了大气湍流模拟的时域模型,用于在自适应光学系统的测试中模拟大气湍流的时域变化。讨论了时域模型下随机相位屏平滑帧数和刷新频率与平均风速的关系。结果表明：对表征随机波前的随机相位屏进行时域平滑可使随机波前的变化更符合大气湍流对入射波前连续平滑渐变的影响;随机相位屏的平滑帧数仅与系统口径和大气相干长度相关,而与风速无关;随机相位屏的刷新频率与平均风速成正比,平滑后的刷新频率还与平滑帧数成正比。最后,构造了一套大气湍流模拟装置,应用功率谱分析法对时域模型的有效性进行了验证。     

Deformable mirrors based on piezoelectric unimorph microactuator array for adaptive optics correction

This paper describes a piezoelectric deformable mirror (DM) for adaptive optics (AO) applications, with a 100 μm thick silicon mirror driven by 61 unimorph microactuators. Measurement results show that the stroke of the DM is ~ 7.4 μm at 100 V, and the resonance frequency is at 18 kHz. To demonstrate the correction capability of the DM, low-order Zernike modes up to 14th term were reproduced. Furthermore, a close-loop correction of laser beam in a 633 nm helium-neon laser system was performed. After system aberrations being compensated, a focal spot approximate to Airy disk was achieved.     

In situ roughness monitoring of sputtered Pt thin film under dynamic turbulence using adaptive optics

A new optical monitoring system for rapid and in situ surface roughness measurement of Pt film on silicon is developed in this study. The in-process measurement is achieved by combining an optical probe of laser-scattering phenomena and adaptive optics for aberration correction. Platinum (Pt) thin film is selected due to the extensive utilization in semiconductor industry and excellent chemical inertness. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the necessity for adaptive optics (AO) compensation in regions containing room-temperature turbulences. Measurement results of eight Pt films (roughness ranging from 58 to 83 nm) sputtered on top of P-type silicon wafer demonstrate excellent correlation between the peak power and average roughness with a correlation coefficient (R²) of 0.9962 and a trend equation for predicting the surface roughness of Pt thin films is obtained as y = 9E07x^−3.783. Roughness average (Ra) of Pt thin films (x) of can be directly determined from the peak power (y) using the proposed method under dynamic disturbance. Furthermore, the proposed AO-assisted system is in good agreement with stylus method and less than 1.1% error values are obtained for the aforementioned average sample roughness.     

远海海面大气光学湍流实验测量

将光纤湍流测量系统搭载于我国的“远望号”航天测量船, 首次实现了远海海面大气光学湍流的空间多点同步测量, 初步获得了远海海面大气光学湍流的基本特征和定量数据. 测量共进行了37天, 测量数据处理包括大气光学湍流强度的统计分析、采用Greenwood湍流空间相关函数模型对实测的光学湍流空间相关函数进行非线性拟合从而获得湍流的空间外尺度, 以及采用分段拟合算法获取光学湍流的功率谱标度指数. 结果表明: 海面大气光学湍流强度中等偏弱, 且无明显规律性的日变化趋势; 空间外尺度较小, 约为0.2-0.3 m; 湍流谱标度指数符合-5/3次方的概率均为25%左右, 低于相应的近地面概率.     

High sensitivity adaptive optics control of laser beam based on interferometric phase-front detection

We present an upgrade of an adaptive optics (AO) system for the control of geometrical fluctuations in a laser beam, based on the interferometric detection of phase front. Acoustic isolation and suitable design of optical system make the present system very sensitive to laser beam geometrical fluctuations and can be an interesting step toward the active correction of the small perturbations of the input beam of gravitational wave interferometric detectors.     

Long-exposure far-field properties of the array of mutually-injected fiber lasers

In this paper, the long-exposure far-field properties of the array of mutually-injected fiber lasers are studied to understand the effect of the multiple phase-locked states on coherent beam combining of the array. It is found that the long-exposure far-field will degenerate into the superposition of the intensities of the elementary lasers when all the phase-locked states of the array are exported with the same probability. It means that the interference pattern will be greatly weakened in the long-exposure far-field because of the export of multiple phase-locked states of the array. This result implies that the multiple phase-locked states of the array go against coherent beam combining of the array, and only some of these phase-locked states should be exported. Then, the effects of the high-order phase-locked states on the far-field are discussed. The result suggests that only the in-phase state should be exported (i.e., all the other phase-locked states should be suppressed) in order to realize high-efficiency (> 80%) coherent beam combining when the number of the elementary lasers of the array is smaller than 19.     

Experimental explorations of the high-order Gaussian mode transformation based on blind-optimization adaptive optics

We present research on high-order Gaussian laser beam transformation by using adaptive optics (AO) technique. Numerical simulation for a mode transformation system based on stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm was accomplished, along with experimental results obtained for a transformation of TEM₂₀ mode with 37 control channels. The far-field energy centrality of TEM₂₀ mode was advanced and the evaluation function increased more than a factor of 6 after transformation. The experiments results indicate the feasibility of blind-optimization AO in mode transformation system.     

Experimental validation of closed-loop adaptive optics based on a self-referencing interferometer wavefront sensor and a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator

A closed-loop adaptive optics system based on a self-referencing interferometer wavefront sensor (SRI WFS) using phase-shifting point-diffraction technique and an electrically addressed phase-only liquid-crystal spatial light modulator (LC SLM) is built and validated experimentally. The wavefront aberration of incoming beam is directly measured by analyzing four frames phase-shifted interferograms captured by a single CCD camera in two camera shots, and then by loading the conjugate function onto the SLM the wavefront aberration is corrected. The proposed scheme does not rely on any complicated control algorithm or wavefront-reconstruction algorithm and can achieve high-resolution and high-accuracy correction. Closed-loop correction results of single order Zernike aberrations and a Kolmogorov turbulence phase screen show that considerable improvements in the Strehl ratio (of greater than 0.94) is achieved.     

Hyperboloid cylinder-plane lens for shaping laser diode array beam

A high coupling efficiency, simple structure refractive lens was designed; a hyperboloid cylinder-plane lens was proposed to reduce the divergence angle of the laser diode array beam in the fast axis direction. Based on the ray-tracing method, the shape of the input refractive surface of the designed lens is determined by numerical analysis, and designed as aspherical profile in one direction. When the beam from source point reaches the input surface of the lens, it is refracted and becomes a parallel output beam in the fast axis direction. The expressions for describing the irradiance behind the lens are also derived.     

光纤激光器自组织相干阵列的理论分析

 分析了光纤激光器自相干阵列最简单的情况——两个光纤激光器之间的相位锁定过程。建立了该过程的数学模型,并对它的时间特性和输出光束的模式进行了理论和数值分析,讨论了运行频率差和耦合系数对锁相过程的影响。对于运行频率相等的两个光纤激光器,当两个光纤激光器初始相位差不为0时,相位锁定后的激光器阵列输出模式为异相模;对于运行频率不等的情形,给出了锁相运行对两个光纤激光器运行频率差的要求,并分析了降低这种要求的几种方法。     

Retina imaging system with adaptive optics for the eye with or without myopia

An adaptive optics system for the retina imaging is introduced in the paper. It can be applied to the eye with myopia from 0 to 6 diopters without any adjustment of the system. A high-resolution liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) device is used as the wave-front corrector. The aberration is detected by a Shack-Harmann wave-front sensor (HASO) that has a Root Mean Square (RMS) measurement accuracy of λ/100 (λ = 0.633 μm). And an equivalent scale model eye is constructed with a short focal length lens (∼18 mm) and a diffuse reflection object (paper screen) as the retina. By changing the distance between the paper screen and the lens, we simulate the eye with larger diopters than 5 and the depth of field. The RMS value both before and after correction is obtained by the wave-front sensor. After correction, the system reaches the diffraction-limited resolution approximately 230 cycles/mm at the object space. It is proved that if the myopia is smaller than 6 diopters and the depth of field is between −40 and +50 mm, the system can correct the aberration very well.     

Real-time blind deconvolution of retinal images in adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopy

With the use of adaptive optics (AO), the ocular aberrations can be compensated to get high-resolution image of living human retina. However, the wavefront correction is not perfect due to the wavefront measure error and hardware restrictions. Thus, it is necessary to use a deconvolution algorithm to recover the retinal images. In this paper, a blind deconvolution technique called Incremental Wiener filter is used to restore the adaptive optics confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) images. The point-spread function (PSF) measured by wavefront sensor is only used as an initial value of our algorithm. We also realize the Incremental Wiener filter on graphics processing unit (GPU) in real-time. When the image size is 512 × 480 pixels, six iterations of our algorithm only spend about 10 ms. Retinal blood vessels as well as cells in retinal images are restored by our algorithm, and the PSFs are also revised. Retinal images with and without adaptive optics are both restored. The results show that Incremental Wiener filter reduces the noises and improve the image quality.     

大气湍流对径向分布高斯列阵光束扩展和方向性的影响

采用积分变换的技巧,推导出了径向分布高斯列阵光束通过湍流大气传输的二阶矩束宽和远场发散角的解析公式,并详细研究了大气湍流对光束扩展和方向性的影响.研究表明,相干合成情况下,子光束数N越小、径向分布半径r₀越大,列阵光束扩展受湍流影响越小.相干较非相干合成时列阵光束的扩展小,但非相干合成时列阵光束扩展受湍流的影响比相干合成时的小.特别地,N足够小或r₀足够大时,相干与非相干合成列阵光束的远场束宽相等.另一方面,还给出了相干和非相干合成径向分布高斯列阵 关键词： 径向分布高斯列阵光束 大气湍流 相干和非相干合成 二阶矩束宽     

湍流对地-空光通信系统性能的影响及自适应光学补偿

空间通信在地 空通信中具有广阔的应用前景。大气湍流引起的相位噪声会严重地影响系统的性能,而自适应光学补偿可使问题得到很好的解决。分析了湍流引起的相位噪声问题,并以Hufnagel湍流模型为例,借助结构函数的概念对这一噪声进行了计算。论证了自适应光学补偿方案。     

Linear quadratic regulator for laser beam shaping

The performance of an adaptive optics system depends on multiple factors, including the quality of the laser beam before being projected to the mesosphere. In general, cumbersome procedures are required to optimize the laser beam in terms of amplitude and phase. However, aberrations produced by the optics of the laser beam system are still detected during the operations due to, for example, uncertainty in the utilized models. In this paper we propose the use of feedback to overcome the presence of model uncertainty and disturbances. In particular we use a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) for closed loop laser beam shaping using a setup of two deformable mirrors. The proposed method is studied and simulated to provide an automatic optimization of the Amplitude of the laser beam. The performance of the LQR control algorithm is evaluated via numerical simulations using the root mean square error (RMSE). The results show an effective amplitude correction of the laser system aberrations after 20 iterations of the algorithm, a RMSE less than 0.7 was obtained, with about 140 actuators per mirror and a separation of z=3 [m] among the mirrors.     

双曲余弦高斯列阵光束在湍流大气中的光束传输因子

本文推导出了双曲余弦高斯(ChG)列阵光束在湍流大气中的光束传输因子( M ^{2因子)的解析公式,并采用相对 M 2因子研究了湍流对 M 2因子的影响.研究表明,在湍流大气中 M 2因子不再是一个传输不变量,湍流使得 M 2因子增大.非相干合成情况下, M 2因子随着传输距离、光束参数、相对子光束间距和子光束数目的增大而增大.相干合成情况下, M 2因子随光束参数和相对子光束间距的增大呈现振荡上升.相干合成情况下的 M 2因子比 关键词： M2因子)')" href="#">光束传输因子(M2因子) 光束质量 双曲余弦高斯列阵光束 大气湍流}