Beam Steering

A non-mechanical alternate to gimbal mirrors

Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) has been actively involved in non-mechanical beamsteering efforts, primarily through the development of Liquid Crystal on Silicon Optical (LCoS) Phased Array (OPA) devices These devices use a unique backplane with a linear array of thousands of long thin electrodes spaced 1-2 microns apart. By varying the refractive index of the liquid crystal above each electrode, one can produce a phase grating. The resulting device can be thought of as a programmable prism, capable of non-mechanical laser beamsteering. Current devices can steer precisely within a few degrees. Because no scanning is involved, the device can rapidly reconfigure to a new position. Testing has proven the devices to be both radiation tolerant and capable of withstanding high peak and average laser power levels.

BNS is actively pursuing improvements to LCoS-OPA devices. In addition, we are developing a “course steering” configuration that is compatible with fine-steering OPA devices enabling very large steer angle coverage, without sacrificing resolution.

Phased Array of Phased Array (PAPA) configurations combine multiple OPA each individually illuminated by separate sources, into a single high-power coherent beam. BNS is researching PAPA techniques to support high-power beam combining and laser communication architectures.