Multiple-prism beam expanders are unique beam magnification means which expand a light beam without focusing it and... with the added option of achromaticity. Our experience with these wondrous prismatic arrays began in 1980 (F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, A double-prism beam expander for pulsed dye lasers, Opt. Commun. 35, 100-104 (1980)) and has continued to expand ever since. Applications are found in:
Astronomy
Interferometry
Intracavity beam expansion
Extracavity beam expansion
Microscopy
Multiple-prism beam expanders designed either in additive or compensating dispersive configuration. Beam expansion factors greater than 200 (M > 200) are feasible depending on the input aperture. Input parameters include: laser wavelength, input aperture, beam expansion factor, transmission efficiency, required physical length of the multiple-prism array. Option 1: design only. Option 2: design plus US made multiple-prism array. Representative multiple-prism beam expander specifications are available in PDF form. Specialized designs for the ultraviolet and the infrared regions of the spectrum are also available on request.
Figure 1. Multiple-prism arrays in compensating configurations
Note: the principles of the multiple-prism beam expanders mentioned here are described in F. J. Duarte, Tunable Laser Optics (Elsevier-Academic, New York, 2003) (see Chapters 4 and 6). These particular multiple-prism beam expanders are depicted in Fig. 6.15 which includes various architectures in additive and compensating configurations.
Figure 2. Photograph of a multiple-prism beam expander showing the last prism in the array and the magnified laser beam in the far field.
References
F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, A double-prism beam expander for pulsed dye lasers, Opt. Commun. 35, 100-104 (1980).
F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, A prism preexpanded grazing incidence pulsed dye laser, Appl. Opt. 20, 2113-2116 (1981).
F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, Comparison of prism preexpanded and grazing incidence grating cavities for copper laser pumped dye lasers, Appl. Opt. 21, 2782-2786 (1982).
F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, Dispersion theory of multiple-prism beam expander for pulsed dye lasers, Opt. Commun. 43, 303-307 (1982).
F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, Generalized prism dispersion theory, Am. J. Phys. 51, 1132-1134 (1983).
F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, Narrow linewidth high prf copper laser-pumped dye-laser oscillators, Appl. Opt. 23, 1391-1394 (1984).
F. J. Duarte and J. A. Piper, Multi-pass dispersion theory of prismatic pulsed dye lasers, Optica Acta 31, 331-335 (1984).
F. J. Duarte, Note on achromatic multiple-prism beam expanders, Opt. Commun. 53, 259-262 (1985).
F. J. Duarte, Variable linewidth high power TEA CO2 laser, Appl. Opt. 24, 34-37 (1985).
F. J. Duarte, Multiple-prism Littrow and grazing incidence pulsed CO2 lasers, Appl. Opt. 24, 1244-1245 (1985).
F. J. Duarte, Generalized multiple-prism dispersion theory for pulse compression in ultrafast dye lasers, Opt. Quantum Electron. 19, 223-229 (1987).
F. J. Duarte, Ray transfer matrix analysis of multiple-prism dye laser oscillators, Opt. Quantum. Electron. 21, 47-54 (1989).
F. J. Duarte, Transmission efficiency in achromatic nonorthogonal multiple-prism laser beam expanders, Opt. Commun. 71, 1-5 (1989).
F. J. Duarte, Prismatic pulse compression: beam deviations and geometrical perturbations, Opt. Quantum Electron. 22, 467-471 (1990).
F. J. Duarte, Multiple-prism dispersion and 4x4 ray transfer matrices, Opt. Quantum Electron. 24, 49-53 (1992).
F. J. Duarte, Multiple-prism arrays in laser optics, Am. J. Phys. 68, 162-166 (2000).
F. J. Duarte, Newton, prisms, and the opticks of tunable lasers, Optics & Photonics News 11 (5), 24-28 (2000).
F. J. Duarte, Multiple-return-pass beam divergence and the linewidth equation, Appl. Opt. 40, 3038 - 3041 (2001).