Abstract
Nonlinear optical phenomena in a variety of materials are currently under investigation for use in optical limiting devices for eye protection. Although several materials and configurations have been used in "proof-of-principle” demonstrations, to date the performance of all such systems falls well short of that necessary for a practical device, because of inadequate dynamic range, field of view, bandwidth, and similar problems. Any practical device designed for eye protection must possess a high linear transmission throughout a significant portion of the visible spectrum, but must rapidly switch to a low transmission state for intense input radiation. Furthermore, for pulsed inputs, it is desirable to limit the output fluence of the device to less than 0.5 μJ/cm2 over a significant range of input fluences. This implies that tire device must switch to the low transmission state at extremely low input fluences, and it should exhibit a wide dynamic range. The device should also have a wide field of view, which dictates a low f-number optical system. Finally, since one is not likely to have a prior knowledge of the temporal nature of the input pulse, it should function for a wide range of input pulse durations. This indicates that fluence dependent processes in the nonlinear material are preferable to irradiance dependent processes.
© 1993 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
T. Xia, D. J. Hagan, and E. W. Van Stryland
CFI4 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1993
A. Nevejina-Sturhan, O. Werhahn, and U. Siegner
CWA5 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 2002
Richard G. S. Pong, James S. Shirk, Steven R. Flom, F. J. Bartoli, Arthur W. Snow, and Michael E. Boyle
CTuQ2 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1996