Very long range surveillance and target recognition applications in the infrared spectral range require optical lens
systems with large focal length and high numerical aperture optimized for low aberrations and stray light at a working
temperature considerably different from the temperature of mounting and adjustment of the system. Additionally, for the
airborne use the system shall be rugged, lightweight and compact. These conflicting requirements do not only represent a
demanding design task. The much bigger challenges consist in the selection and characterisation of the optical material,
in the fabrication and measurement of the particular optical elements, in their integration into the lens system as well as
in the characterisation of this lens system and in the verification of its performance parameters. Recent technological
approaches developed at JENOPTIK Laser, Optik, Systeme GmbH for the fabrication and the test of such lens systems
will be presented in this paper. It will be shown that an iterative combination of manufacturing and measurement
techniques is needed for the fabrication of IR lens systems meeting the highest performance requirements.
The fast development of sensors with high sensitivity and growing pixel numbers for the IR range drives the
development of suitable optical systems. This is enforced by the growing demands of the defense and security sector.
JENOPTIK LASER, OPTIK, SYSTEME GmbH serves this market based on many years of experience. The product
spectrum contains all usual types of optical components. Most of the typical IR transmitting and reflecting materials are
machined. The quality scale reaches from medium to high-end, where the latter is mostly needed for defense
applications. High-efficiency, highly durable and environmentally stable anti-reflection coatings for the complete
spectrum of substrate materials are developed and produced in-house. JENOPTIK is developing and manufacturing
custom-tailored lens systems and electro-optical modules for civil and military applications. This includes optical
modules for IR cameras and for long range surveillance and target recognition, which fulfill the highest demands with
respect to imaging quality, aperture, stray light, compactness, and durability. The testing and the verification of
performance parameters include interferometrical testing, transmission, scattering, and MTF measurement at working
temperature. A combination of design, manufacturing and measurement techniques is needed for the fabrication of IR
lens systems meeting the highest performance requirements.
We experimentally observed the unusually fast response in a two-wave mixing arrangement with fiber-like Bi12TiO20 crystals on transient change of the external electric field. Pulses of the amplification of the signal wave with a rise time down to 0.2 ms and a width of 0.5 ms at a total input intensity of 6 mW/mm2 are obtained when applying a rising or decreasing front of an external electric field to the crystal. The two-wave coupling without external field has a response time of 200 ms.
In a photorefractive Bi12SiO20 crystal with high applied electric AC field of square-wave shape a fast two- wave coupling response (less than 1 second) and a slow hologram readout decay (minutes) was found for a wavelength of 633 nm. This can be explained by electron-hole transport with two trap-levels. An intensity dependence of the slower complementary grating was found. Illuminating with the readout wave without applied electric field leads to a very slow grating decay (many hours).
Barium-calcium titanate is a novel photorefractive crystal for optical storage applications. It is grown from a congruently melting composition from BaTiO3 and CaTiO3. In contrast to pure BaTiO3 the melting temperature is with I 592 °C nearly 30 ° deeper, the crystal is cubic at the growth temperature and shows a phase transition to the tetragonal structure at 98°C. It means that as in BaTiO3 a spontaneous poling appears. The lattice constants are smaller than in BaTiO3, a =b = 3.962 nm and c =3.999 nm and decreace with increasing Ca content. Therefore, the crystal is an optical uniaxial one. Asecond phase transition like in BaTiO3 is not found /1/. The refractive indices are slightly smaller than those of BaTiO3 but the electrooptic coefficients r13 =36 pm/V and r33 = 140 pm/V are larger (2 = 514 nm) /2/. Therefore, the BaiCaTiO3-crystal is a very promising material for optical information storage. In our experiments we used a 1 cm 1 cm 1 cm large crystal, poled in an external electric field, therfore obtaining a single domain sample. All sides are polished to optical quality. The sample shows in ordinarily polarized light extremly high fanning effects. We have studied the two wave mixing (TWM) for ordinary and extraordinary polarized light (A =514 nm). As expected, with extraordinary polarized light the buildup time is much longer (about 10 s) than with ordinarily polarized light (5 s), but the reached gain for a given intensity ratio between pump wave and signal wave is 2 orders higher. Varying the intensity ratio the logaritmic dependence of the gain on the intensity ratio is nearly linear. (The maximum value reached in our experiments is 4.6, it means the signal intensity behind the crystal is 40 000 times higher than the incident signal intensity). Very interesting is the behavior that the amplification will allways reach a maximum absolute value - nearly 3% of the pump wave is coupled to the signal wave. Reading the refractive index grating in the crystal after switching off the signal wave, a typical temporal behavior ofthe reconstructed signal wave is observed. This behavior can be explained with a multi level model ofthe photorefractive process inside the crystal /3, 4, 5/ The information will be recorded over a very long time interval, and multiple storage (for example via angular coding) is possible.
In our report we compare different ways of realizing an optical novelty filter with photorefractive barium titanate crystals. We present experiments on the basis of beam fanning, two-wave mixing and self-pumped phase conjugate geometries. The application of photorefractive novelty filters not only for phase visualization but also for the measurement of transient phase changes in a laser beam is demonstrated. The phase calculation from an interferogram is supplied or replaced by the novelty filter's phase transfer function. The use of such techniques instead of conventional interferometry for transient phase evaluation results in a simplified measuring procedure.
For the application of self-pumped phase-conjugate mirrors in interferometric arrangements, the properties of such devices have to be characterized. In this paper, we define figures of merit on the basis of experimental investigations and show, how the field of possible interferometric applications is limited in the case of a non-ideal phase conjugation process under stationary and transient conditions.
We show a possibility of realizing an optical memory using dynamic refreshment. Via phase-correct back-coupling by means of nonlinear optical phase-conjugation the information stored in a photorefractive crystal is periodically read out, transmitted into a second crystal acting as an auxiliary memory and from this transmitted back into the first crystal. In this way the information is refreshed.
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