Widely tunable infrared source system and method

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11043787-B2
Application number	US-202016869729-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 8, 2020
Priority date	Jun 20, 2012
Publication date	Jun 22, 2021
Grant date	Jun 22, 2021

Abstract

A system and method for tuning and infrared source laser in the Mid-IR wavelength range. The system and method comprising, at least, a plurality of individually tunable emitters, each emitter emitting a beam having a unique wavelength, a grating, a mirror positioned after the grating to receive at least one refracted order of light of at least one beam and to redirect the beam back towards the grating, and a micro-electro-mechanical systems device containing a plurality of adjustable micro-mirrors.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of forming a multi-wavelength output beam, the method comprising:
providing a plurality of beam emitters;
stabilizing beams emitted by the beam emitters each to a different wavelength utilizing an external lasing cavity;
converging the beams onto a diffraction grating; and
with the diffraction grating, diffracting each beam and reflecting first-order diffracted light from each beam toward a common direction to thereby form a multi-wavelength output beam.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising collimating and/or focusing the output beam downstream of the diffraction grating.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein each beam is stabilized via reflection from an optical element spaced away from its beam emitter.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein each of the beams is converged onto the diffraction grating by an optical element.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the beam emitters are mechanically positioned such that the beams emitted thereby converge onto the grating.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein each beam emitter is a laser diode.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein each beam emitter is a quantum cascade laser.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein each beam emitter is lensed with collimating optics.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein each beam emitter emits visible light.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the common direction of the reflected first-order diffracted light is away from the plurality of beam emitters.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the common direction of the reflected first-order diffracted light is approximately perpendicular to a propagation direction of light emitted by at least one of the beam emitters toward the diffraction grating.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the wavelengths of the emitted beams are linearly chirped.

13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising tuning the wavelength of the beam emitted by each beam emitter.

14. The method of claim 11 , wherein the wavelengths of the emitted beams are tuned with an array of reflectors.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the array of reflectors is at least a portion of a micro-electro-mechanical systems device.

16. The method of claim 14 , wherein the array of reflectors is at least a portion of a digital light processing chip.

17. The method of claim 14 , wherein each of the reflectors within the array of reflectors is individually controllable.

18. The method of claim 1 , wherein the diffraction grating has a grating dispersion of at least 150 lines per millimeter.

Assignees

• Chann Bien
• Huang Robin
• Tayebati Parviz
• Teradiode Inc

Inventors

• Chann Bien
• Huang Robin
• Tayebati Parviz

Classifications

• H01S3/10

  Controlling the intensity, frequency, phase, polarisation or direction of the emitted radiation, e.g. switching, gating, modulating or demodulating · CPC title

• H01S3/0085

  Modulating the output, i.e. the laser beam is modulated outside the laser cavity · CPC title

• H01S5/02255

  using beam deflecting elements · CPC title

• B01L3/50851

  specially adapted for heating or cooling samples · CPC title

• H01S3/10023

  by functional association of additional optical elements, e.g. filters, gratings, reflectors · CPC title