Heterodyne laser diagnostic system
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the United States Department of Energy
InventorsMichael A. Globig, Michael A. Johnson, Richard W. Wyeth
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Abstract
The heterodyne laser diagnostic system includes, in one embodiment, an average power pulsed laser optical spectrum analyzer for determining the average power of the pulsed laser. In another embodiment, the system includes a pulsed laser instantaneous optical frequency measurement for determining the instantaneous optical frequency of the pulsed laser.
Claims6
A laser optical spectrum analyzer comprising
- a pulsed laser for generating a series of pulsed laser beams,
- a continuous wave (CW) laser for generating a continuous wave (CW) laser beam,
- means for measuring the average power spectrum of said series of pulsed laser beams, including means for heterodyning said series of pulsed laser beams with said CW laser beam to from a heterodyned output, including
- means for detecting the heterodyned output,
- means for analyzing said heterodyned output, including
- means for sampling the output of said analyzing means, and
- means for plotting the average frequency spectrum with respect to time of said series of pulsed laser beams.
A system for measuring the instantaneous frequencies of a series of pulsed laser beams comprising
- a pulsed laser for generating a series of pulsed laser beams comprising
- a pulsed laser for generating a series of pulsed laser beams,
- a continuous wave (CW) laser for generating a continuous wave laser beam,
- means for heterodyning said series of pulsed laser beams with said CW laser beam to form a heterodyned output, and
- means for analyzing in the time domain said heterodyned output to provide a plot of the instantaneous frequency of said pulsed laser beams.
A laser heterodyne processing system comprising
- means for heterodyning a continuous wave laser beam with a series of pulsed laser beams having a frequency to be determined to form a plurality of laser heterodyne signals, and
- processing means for determining the average instantaneous frequency versus time of said laser beams.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.