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Miniature Reflective Beam Expanders

Product News Thursday, July 24, 2014: EngNet - Engineering Network

New smaller diameter (25 - 60mm) Reflective Beam Expanders have been introduced by Optical Surfaces Ltd. for space restricted applications such as for high power lasers and multi-wavelength interferometry.

OSL reflective beam expanders are aspheric mirror-based devices offering either beam expansion or reduction capabilities. Incorporating high precision off-axis mirrors, OSL reflective beam expanders provide an unobstructed output and highly efficient transmission. By comparison, due to dispersion, lens-based beam expanders are only capable of compensating for focus at one wavelength of light, making them only suitable for expanding/reducing monochromatic sources. Reflective beam expanders use mirrors which have constant focal lengths, regardless of the light being focused. Thus, reflective beam expanders can be used with collimated polychromatic light without the need of any fine focus adjustment.

Available in standard (2.5x, 5x, 10x fixed magnification) or customer specified (fixed or variable magnification) configurations – OSL smaller diameter reflective beam expanders are designed to be easy to use and to provide accurate, unobstructed expansion / contraction of any collimated input light source. Optical Surfaces reflective beam expanders are portable and can be used without the need for internal re-alignment.

Each OSL reflective beam expander is supplied housed in aluminium housing with provision for fixing to an optical table. Alignment aids are provided to ensure correct beam pointing. Manufactured to better than lambda/5 surface accuracy, the off-axis design of these reflective beam expanders produces no central obscuration and highly efficient transmission is obtained, unspoilt by spider diffraction patterns. An interferogram and OPD map is supplied with every reflective beam expander manufactured by Optical Surfaces Ltd.

Optical Surfaces Ltd has been producing optical components and systems from its ISO 9001-2000 approved manufacturing facility for more than 50 years and are today accepted as one of the world's leading manufacturers of reflective beam expanders.