Article Abstracts | June 2006
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A New Look at Risley Prisms
This beam-steering technique is fast, accurate and relatively insensitive to vibration.
by Craig Schwarze, Optra Inc.
With more and more applications requiring laser beams to be aimed at distant targets, such as for line-of-sight communications, aircraft-to-satellite secure communications, and laser weapons and countermeasures, there are increasing demands for compact, robust and economical devices for beam steering. Gimballed mirrors are the most commonly used beam-steering systems but, recently, Risley prisms are satisfying beam-steering requirements.
Risley prisms were originally used by ophthalmologists to measure binocular accommodation (the ability of the optical axes for the two eyes to converge for nearby objects) and thus had a relatively small angular range. More recently, they have been designed to cover a wide range of angles and have been achromatized to minimize chromatic variations in steering direction...
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