We describe a fast figure metrology system designed for the several thousand mirror quadrants in the High Energy Focusing Telescope (HEFT) balloon experiment. HEFT's multilayer coated hard x-ray optics will have ~ 1 arcminute HEW and operate at 20-80 keV. The optics are a conical approximation to the Wolter-I configuration. Our automated system can measure the axial figure error, in-phase and o...

A mirror world, which is a virtual space modeling a physical space, attracts enormous interests from VR community recently. Various applications such as Second Life, Google Earth and Virtual Earth have proven their usefulness and potentialities. We introduce a novel method to build a mirror world by acquiring environment data represented as a point cloud. Since our system provides a streaming s...

The performance of a MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical-system) segmented deformable mirror was evaluated in an adaptive optics (AO) scanning laser ophthalmoscope. The tested AO mirror (Iris AO, Inc, Berkeley, CA) is composed of 37 hexagonal segments that allow piston/tip/tilt motion up to 5 μm stroke and ±5 mrad angle over a 3.5 mm optical aperture. The control system that implements the closed-lo...

There is an increasing need for broadband tunable lasers, with a narrow line-width, in the near-infrared region. Especially spectroscopists are interested in the region around 5/am, but also for laser-induced chemistry and air-pollution monitoring there are interesting applications for lasers in this wavelength region. A tunable cw CO laser will be a very attractive candidate because of its hig...

A method of real-time dynamical simulation for laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors is presented. The method is based on a digital filtering approach and a number of important physical points understood by a step-by-step investigation of two-mirror cavities, a three-mirror coupled cavity, and a full-length power-recycled interferometer with mirrors having longitudinal motion. The ...

A new diode-pumped laser fusion driver has been conceptually designed. The output power is 1.2 MJ and 0.1 MJ for a compression laser and a heating laser, respectively, at 16 Hz repetition rate and 17% electrical-optical efficiency. We have proposed two new technologies into the laser system to improve its laser output characteristics dramatically. One is cryogenic Yb:YAG ceramics as a laser mat...

Improving the temporal contrast of ultrashort and ultraintense laser pulses is a major technical issue for high-field experiments. This can be achieved using a so-called "plasma mirror." We present a detailed experimental and theoretical study of the plasma mirror that allows us to quantitatively assess the performances of this system. Our experimental results include time-resolved measurements...

A tuning element has been constructed using micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS) technology for Littman configuration external cavity tunable lasers. The device is fabricated by deep reactive ion etching of bonded silicon-on-insulator, using a single layer of patterning to integrate a fixed grating and a mirror that is rotated about a virtual pivot by an electrostatic comb drive. The m...

A high resolution heterodyne laser interferometer without periodic nonlinearity for linear displacement measurements is described. It uses two spatially separated beams with an offset frequency and an interferometer configuration which has no mixed states to prevent polarization mixing. In this research, a simple interferometer configuration for both retroreflector and plane mirror targets whic...

Silicon carbide mirrors are sought for a variety of aerospace applications. While optical polishing techniques are straight forward for flat and spherical surfaces, material removal rates for this hard, brittle material are too low for affordable processing of conventionally machined, ground, or as-produced surfaces. The problem is more severe for aspheres. This paper reports on the use of pico...