Method and apparatus for pulse stacking
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the United States Energy Research and Development Administration
InventorRobert C. Harney
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Abstract
An active pulse stacking system including an etalon and an electro-optical modulator apparatus combined with a pulse-forming network capable of forming and summing a sequence of time-delayed optical waveforms arising from, for example, a single laser pulse. The Pockels cell pulse stacker may attain an efficiency of about 2.6% while providing a controllable faster-than-exponential time rise in transmitted pulse intensity.
Claims28
A pulse stacking system in a pulse-forming network capable of forming and summing a sequence of time-delayed waveforms arising from a single light pulse comprising:
- an etalon, an electro-optical modulator positioned in aligned spaced relationship with said etalon, power supply and optical switch means operably connected to said modulator, means for polarizing a light pulse being directed into said modulator, analyzer means aligned to receive an output pulse from said modulator, said analyzer means being of a differing polarization direction with respect to said polarizing means, and pulse directing means for directing portions of an incoming pulse into said etalon and into said power supply and optical switch means.
A method for generating a light pulse with controllably short risetime consisting of the steps of passing a pulse of light through an etalon to form many time-delayed pulses having images of the original pulse, passing each of the time delayed pulses through a polarizer, directing each of the polarized pulses through an electro-optical modulator, imposing a rapidly time-varying voltage across the modulator, and passing the resulting modulator output through another polarizer of differing polarization direction with respect to the first-mentioned polarizer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.