Integrated Tactile Transduction Garmet for In-Flight Spatial Orientation

Not Available DOD and other government agencies as well as commercial laser manufacturers have a strong need for high power narrow reflectors. Two specific examples of immediate importance are 940 nm Nd lasers for water vapor lidar, and high energy 1.03um Yb lasers. These lasers require optics with high reflection associated with antireflection less than 70 nm apart. Such optics are extremely difficult to fabricate with existing thin films coating technology. This SBIR project is aimed at addressing these limitations by developing optics based on distributed Bragg reflectors (DBR) in bulk optical materials. The production of DBR optics will be accomplished by incorporating periodic refractive index gratings in optical quality crystals by an innovative process developed in part through previous NASA SBIR projects aimed at producing ultra-high perfection materials for laser gain media. By precisely controlling growth parameters, compositional variations can be incorporated in crystalline materials. These compositional variations result in an associated refractive index grating that can form a DBR. Optics based on this technology would be tunable and have high damage thresholds. This project will demonstrate the capability of systematically producing periodic refractive index variations index in bulk materials and characterize their applicability as optical components.