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US 9,042,414 B2Granted
External cavity laser source
AssigneeSpectral Sciences, Inc.
InventorsPajo Vukovic-Cvijin, Neil Goldstein
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A tunable laser source that includes multiple gain elements and uses a spatial light modulator in an external cavity to produce spectrally tunable output is claimed. Several designs of the external cavity are described, targeting different performance characteristics and different manufacturing costs for the device. Compared to existing devices, the tunable laser source produces high output power, wide tuning range, fast tuning rate, and high spectral resolution.
Claims21
A tunable laser containing an external cavity, comprising:
- a first, dispersion element, comprising a curved spectral dispersion grating that disperses incident radiation into a number of separate wavelengths;
- a second element in the external cavity, the second element being reflective or refractive and having a first curved face that is spaced from and concentric with the curved grating;
- one or more tunable gain elements providing sources of optical radiation at different wavelengths, where the radiation is directed through or reflected from the second element and focused thereby on the dispersion grating, where it is dispersed into a number of separate wavelengths that are directed back through or reflected from the second element;
- a digital micromirror array (DMA) that defines a plurality of sub-apertures that are adapted to change their reflectance properties, where the DMA receives the separate wavelengths from the dispersion grating and outputs a selected wavelength which is sent back to oscillate in the cavity;
- and
- a control system that causes the sub-apertures of the DMA to change their reflectance properties, to determine an output wavelength of the laser.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.