Evaluation of a novel mid-infrared pyrometer for dynamic material experiments.

Temperature is a complicated thermodynamic parameter to measure in dynamic compression experiments. Optical pyrometry is a general-purpose "work-horse" technique for measuring temperature from a radiant surface on these experimental platforms. The optical pyrometry channels are commonly held to the visible or Near-Infrared spectrum, which provides high fidelity temperature measurement for shock temperature above ∼1200-1500 K. However, low temperature (T < 1200 K) dynamic material experiments, including low pressure or quasi-isentropic studies, as well as experiments with complex thermodynamic paths, require Mid-Infrared (Mid-IR) for high fidelity measurements. This article outlines the design, testing, and characterization of a novel Mid-IR pyrometer system that can be configured between 2.5 and 5.0 µm, suitable for lower temperature measurements and for increasing the fidelity and precision of higher temperature measurements. Experimental validation was done on two separate gas gun platforms, with two separate impact velocities, achieving temperatures between 450 and 1100 K.

Four-plane space-variant Fresnel-transform optical processor with a random phase encoder.

We introduce a four-plane Fresnel-transform space-variant optical processor consisting of an input plane and two filter planes. One filter mask is programmable with a spatial light modulator. The second filter mask is a fixed random binary phase array with a known pseudorandom distribution of pixels. The order of the masks can be interchanged, giving different output characteristics. In one case the Horner efficiency of the correlator increases dramatically. In the other case the edge enhancement of the output image is removed. We discuss the theory for this general processor and its implementation with phase-only masks. We present experimental results when a binary magneto-optic spatial light modulator was used.

Programmable optical logic systems using free-space optical interconnections.

A free-space optical logic technique is presented that utilizes a two-dimensional array of diffractive optical elements. Each optical element focuses light to multiple, separate positions in the output focal plane. The focal spots from different optical elements are allowed to overlap spatially, resulting in interference. By changing the phase shift between the optical elements, one can create different optical logic operations in the focal plane. The technique is demonstrated by the use of two input beams incident onto a multiplexed optical element written onto a programmable spatial light modulator. The optical element simultaneously creates both AND and XOR logic functions in the output plane.