Device for attenuating a narrow bandwidth light beam, in particular a laser beam

Abstract

Abstract Two pairs of plane-parallel glass plates (3-6) provided on both sides with a dielectic antireflection coating (8) which pairs are arranged sequentially in the beam path mutually rotated by 90<o> about the direction of radiation. The plates are arranged so that their angle can be adjusted with respect to the direction of radiation (9), a kinematic coupling of the plates one to another ensuring that the angles of inclination of all the plates are always the same in magnitude. However, within a pair the plates are in each case symmetrical with respect to a plane normal to the direction of radiation. The attenuation of the system depends on the angle of inclination of the plates and is a minimum when the light is incident vertically. The attenuation system does not cause any beam offset, and also has the particular advantage, inter alia, that it does not alter the polarisation state of the light beam and is thus suitable for both unpolarised and polarised light. <IMAGE>

Inventors

• 👤 Jürgen Rudolf Junghans
• 👤 Ernst Huber

Bibliographic Details