Optical systems including wavefront correcting optical surfaces
AssigneeCorning Incorporated
InventorsColleen R Clar, Horst Schreiber
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Abstract
The present invention relates to optical systems, beam expanding assemblies, line narrowing modules, and lasers having refractive optical elements with wavefront correcting optical surfaces. The present invention enables the skilled artisan to provide optical systems, beam expanding assemblies, line narrowing modules, and lasers having improved optical properties, such as, in the case of lasers, narrow linewidth at high power, and substantially planar wavefronts.
Claims7
A beam expanding assembly for expanding a beam, the beam expanding assembly having an input, an output and a beam path, the beam expanding assembly comprising
- a set of one or more prisms configured to expand the beam propagating from the input along the beam path to the output,
- wherein at least one of the one or more prisms has a wavefront correcting optical surface that changes in shape in response to transmission of the beam through the one or more prisms from an initial non-planar form into a second steady-state form that compensates for thermally induced wavefront errors of the beam.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.