Liquid crystal lens with focus movable in focal plane

A liquid crystal lens with focus movable in the focal plane is reported. There are three electrodes in the cell. One electrode with a hole in the center is divided into four subelectrodes. The potential of each subelectrode is adjusted to produce a desired asymmetrical phase transformation resulting in off-axis movement of the focus. The potential of another electrode is adjusted to maintain the focus in the focal plane. Movements of the focus in three directions in the focal plane are demonstrated experimentally, and off-axis movement as large as approximately 800 μm is realized.     

子孔径拼接检测非球面的初步研究

使用子孔径拼接技术可以无需补偿器、大口径的辅助镜、全息图等辅助元件实现对大口径、大偏离量、高陡度非球面甚至离轴非球面的检验,而且可以同时获得中高频的相位信息,大大地提高了测量精度,降低了成本。在总结了常用检测非球面方法优缺点的基础上提出了利用圆形子孔径、环形子孔径检测非球面的基本原理,并对其步骤的实现、数学模型的建立和拼接算法的开发进行了分析和研究。结果表明,子孔径拼接检测技术可以作为补偿检验以外的另一种定量测试非球面的手段,可以和其它检测方法相互验证,从而确保检测的准确性和可靠性。     

基于离轴积分腔输出光谱的燃烧场CO浓度测量研究

CO是碳氢燃料不完全燃烧的重要产物,常常被作为反应燃烧效率的标志物,燃烧场CO组分浓度的精确测量对提高燃烧效率、减少污染物排放具有重要意义。离轴积分腔输出光谱(OA-ICOS)是一种利用物质对激光的特异性吸收,实现对该物质分析和测量的技术,具有非接触、稳定和高灵敏度等优点。针对燃烧场CO浓度低,背景信号干扰强等特点,采用分布反馈式(DFB)激光器搭建基于离轴积分腔输出光谱的CO浓度测量系统,通过直接吸收光谱的测量方法实现对高温燃烧场CO浓度测量。利用仿真模拟的方法,在所用激光器中心波长的附近选出了常温下谱线强度较为突出,高温下不受其他燃烧产物干扰的第一泛频带R(10)吸收谱线。通过固定光程池对比吸光度的方法标定了OA-ICOS系统的有效光程;通过比较不同扫描频率下吸收谱线的信噪比和线型拟合残差标准差,得到最佳波长扫描频率;通过测量不同浓度CO混合气体的吸收信号分析了系统误差。探究了不同燃烧情况下CH₄/Air预混平焰炉上CO的产生情况,根据燃烧场测量区域温度分布情况描述了温度分布不确定度对CO测量结果的影响。当量比为1.0时,在10 ms的测量时间分辨率下,噪声等...     

大口径离轴凸非球面的加工和检测

将光学系统波像差检验技术与子孔径拼接测试技术相融合提出了凸非球面系统拼接检测方法,对该方法的原理和实现步骤进行了分析和研究,并建立了合理的子孔径拼接数学模型.依次利用计算机控制光学表面成形技术和磁流变抛光技术对一包含大口径凸非球面的离轴三反光学系统的各反射镜进行加工,并对整个系统进行装调和测试.测定光学系统各视场的波像差分布,通过综合优化子孔径拼接算法和全口径面形数据插值求解得到大口径凸非球面全口径的面形信息.结合工程实例,对一口径为292mm×183 mm的离轴非球面次镜进行了系统拼接测试和加工,其最终面形分布的均方根值为0.017λ(λ=632.8 nm).     

宽视场长焦距离轴三反射镜光学系统的设计

分析了离轴三反射镜系统成像特性．根据共轴三反射镜光学系统像差理论，确定结构参数的基本计算公式．设计了长焦宽视场的离轴三反射镜光学系统，分析了系统结构参量对像差的影响．结果表明，该系统视角较大，地面复益范围较宽，成像质量接近衍射极限．     

子孔径拼接干涉检测离轴非球面研究

将子孔径拼接技术与干涉技术相结合提出了一种新的检测离轴非球面的方法,该方法无需其他辅助光学元件就可以实现对大口径、离轴非球面的测量.对其基本原理进行了分析和研究;并基于齐次坐标变换、最小二乘拟合建立了综合优化和误差均化的拼接数学模型;开发了子孔径拼接检测非球面的算法软件,并设计和搭建了子孔径拼接干涉检测装置;利用综合优...     

Mixed multi-region design of diffractive optical element for projection exposure system

The diffractive optical element (DOE) is widely used to generate various illumination modes in the projection lithography system. The working principle and design methods of the DOE are discussed in detail in this paper. A mixed multi-region design method is proposed to calculate the phase of DOE based on the poor spatial coherence of excimer laser, using the Gerchberg–Saxton (GS) algorithm. The DOEs generating circular, dipole and quadrupole illumination modes are designed and simulated by three different methods: single region design, repeated multi-region design and mixed multi-region design. The performance of these DOEs are compared and analyzed with these three design methods. The mixed multi-region design method is used to design the DOEs generating three illumination modes, the diffraction efficiencies are greater than 85%, and the non-uniformities of illumination are less than 3%. The analysis results indicate that the DOE designed by the mixed multi-region design can achieve higher diffraction efficiency and illumination uniformity of the far-field intensity distribution without modifying the GS algorithm.     

Performance of a 80 W copper vapor laser with “alignment free” unstable CAT-EYE resonator and other configurations using intra-cavity apertures

Performance of a kinetically enhanced copper vapor laser (KE-CVL) with various stable/unstable “alignment free” CAT-EYE resonator configurations are presented here in this paper. The laser used in the experiment was a 45 mm bore (∼2 l discharge volume) kinetically enhanced copper vapor laser developed in our laboratory and capable of generating maximum power of ∼80 W (at ∼9.8 kHz). The efficiency of the laser was ∼1.4% and beam divergence of ∼3.5 mrad in a plane-plane standard multimode cavity. For the first time performance of unstable CAT-EYE resonator is demonstrated with a CVL/KE-CVL. On using unstable CAT-EYE resonator the divergence of the laser beam reduced to ∼0.22 mrad (∼20-fold reduction as compared to conventional plane-plane cavity), ∼40 W output power and with excellent misalignment tolerance. The laser output power was found to be within ∼5% drift/decline with misalignment angle of about 4 mrad between the mirrors. This is a significant improvement in comparison to standard conventional unstable resonator (M ∼ 50) CVL where ∼0.5 mrad divergence is achieved with power drift/decline of about 45% at ∼4 mrad misalignment angle.Off-axis unstable CAT-EYE unstable resonator was also demonstrated for the first time with further reduction in beam divergence to ∼0.13 mrad and with output power of ∼28 W. The misalignment tolerance was found to be highest in case of off-axis unstable CAT-EYE resonator with decline/drift in laser power of only ∼10% for misalignment angle as high as ∼8 mrad. Performance with intra-cavity apertures in plane-plane type CAT-EYE resonator for transverse mode control is also presented for the first time in CVLs. It is observed that the laser beam divergence reduces significantly to 1.25 mrad (a factor of 2) on using an aperture of ∼3.5 mm at the CAT-EYE reflector as compared to its normal (R = F = d) configuration without aperture. In case of stable CAT-EYE resonator the average beam divergence reduces from 8 mrad to 4 mrad (factor of 2) on using intra-cavity aperture of about 3 mm. It was also observed that high misalignment tolerance was retained on using intra-cavity apertures in almost all the CAT-EYE resonators. Use of intra-cavity mesh was also demonstrated for the first time with stable CAT-EYE resonator for improving the beam focus-ability. Average beam divergence was reduced by a factor of 2.5 (from 8 mrad to 3 mrad) on using intra-cavity mesh. These new configurations in CAT-EYE resonators in KE-CVLs are found to be effective in improving and controlling the laser beam divergence significantly with additional characteristic of high misalignment tolerance.     

Electron holography of biological samples

In this paper, we summarise the development of off-axis electron holography on biological samples starting in 1986 with the first results on ferritin from the group of Tonomura. In the middle of the 1990s strong interest was evoked, but then stagnation took place because the results obtained at that stage did not reach the contrast and the resolution achieved by conventional electron microscopy.

To date, there exist only a few (12) publications on electron holography of biological objects, thus this topic is quite small and concise. The reason for this could be that holography is mostly established in materials science by physicists. Therefore, applications for off-axis holography were powerfully pushed forward in the area of imaging, e.g. electric or magnetic micro- and nanofields. Unstained biological systems investigated by means of off-axis electron holography up to now are ferritin, tobacco mosaic virus, a bacterial flagellum, T5 bacteriophage virus, hexagonal packed intermediate layer of bacteria and the Semliki Forest virus. New results of the authors on collagen fibres and surface layer of bacteria, the so-called S-layer 2D crystal lattice are presented in this review. For the sake of completeness, we will shortly discuss in-line holography of biological samples and off-axis holography of materials related to biological systems, such as biomaterial composites or magnetotactic bacteria.     

Averaging scheme for atomic resolution off-axis electron holograms

All micrographs are limited by shot-noise, which is intrinsic to the detection process of electrons. For beam insensitive specimen this limitation can in principle easily be circumvented by prolonged exposure times. However, in the high-resolution regime several instrumental instabilities limit the applicable exposure time. Particularly in the case of off-axis holography the holograms are highly sensitive to the position and voltage of the electron-optical biprism. We present a novel reconstruction algorithm to average series of off-axis holograms while compensating for specimen drift, biprism drift, drift of biprism voltage, and drift of defocus, which all might cause problematic changes from exposure to exposure. We show an application of the algorithm utilizing also the possibilities of double biprism holography, which results in a high quality exit-wave reconstruction with 75 pm resolution at a very high signal-to-noise ratio.