Yanda Geng, Alan Tsidilkovski, Kevin Weber, Shouvik Mukherjee, Alessandro Restelli, Sarthak Subhankar
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Maintaining stable and precise alignment of a laser beam is crucial in many optical setups. In this work, we present a microcontroller-based rapid auto-alignment system that detects and corrects for drifts in a laser beam trajectory using a pair of two-dimensional duo-lateral position sensing detectors (PSDs) and a pair of mirror mounts with piezoelectric actuators. We develop hardware and software for interfacing with the PSDs and for controlling the motion of the piezoelectric mirror mounts. Our auto-alignment strategy-implemented as a state machine on the microcontroller by a real-time operating system kernel from FreeRTOS-is based on a simple linearized geometrical optical model. We benchmark our system using the standard case of coupling laser light efficiently into the guided mode of a single-mode fiber optic patch cable. We can recover the maximum fiber coupling efficiency in ∼10 seconds, even for a laser beam misaligned to the point of zero fiber coupling efficiency.
期刊介绍:
Review of Scientific Instruments, is committed to the publication of advances in scientific instruments, apparatuses, and techniques. RSI seeks to meet the needs of engineers and scientists in physics, chemistry, and the life sciences.