Abstract
Large angle, nonmechanical beam steering is demonstrated at 4.62 μm using the digital light processing technology. A 42-deg steering range is demonstrated, limited by the field-of-view of the recollimating lens. The measured diffraction efficiency is 8.1% on-axis and falls-off with a sin2 dependence with the steering angle. However, within the 42-deg steering range, the power varied less than 25%. The profile of the steered laser beam is Gaussian with a divergence of 5.2 mrad. Multibeam, randomly addressable beam steering, is also demonstrated.
Highlights
Over the past few years, the development of smaller, lighter beam steering devices with low power requirements has come to the forefront in response to applications such as remote LIDAR systems for chemical sensing as well as for reconnaissance, surveillance, and navigational systems for robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and autonomous ships.[1,2,3,4,5,6] Other applications include communications systems, laser designators, and countermeasure systems against missile attacks
Several nonmechanical beam steering technologies have been demonstrated in the visible, near-infrared (NIR), and short wave IR (SWIR) spectral regions including systems based on diffraction [such as spatial light modulators (SLM),[7] optical phased arrays,[8] and polarization gratings9] and refraction
In previous publications,[7,13] we demonstrated that a visible laser beam could be efficiently steered over a large field of engagement by rendering digital holographic patterns on a liquid crystal SLM
Summary
Over the past few years, the development of smaller, lighter beam steering devices with low power requirements has come to the forefront in response to applications such as remote LIDAR systems for chemical sensing as well as for reconnaissance, surveillance, and navigational systems for robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and autonomous ships.[1,2,3,4,5,6] Other applications include communications systems, laser designators, and countermeasure systems against missile attacks. Mechanical devices are used to steer laser beams in the MWIR spectral region Most of these systems use gimbal-mounted mirrors,[11] a number of applications implement rotating Risley prisms.[12] These steering systems require significant maintenance, have mechanical failure issues, and their speed is limited by the inertia of the optical component. These mechanical systems do not meet the size, weight, and power (SWAP) requirements of small aerial platforms. The efficiency and speed of the device were not addressed in that paper
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