Method and apparatus for producing a cooled atom beam suitable for use applications requiring cold atoms. A two-stage cooling process is employed in which the atoms in the atom beam are cooled in two, spatially separated regions of a cooling apparatus, wherein the atoms are first cooled in two dimensions by two counterpropagating laser beams under a magnetic field and then are cooled in three dimensions by means of an optical molasses, where the power, frequency, and magnetic fields are tuned to obtain a continuous beam of three-dimensionally cooled atoms having a controllable velocity distribution, very low decoherence, and low background atomic gas loss.

An internal laser component of an optical device comprises: a waveguide that defines a guided mode of a first optical wave characterized by a first propagation constant associated with a first effective refractive index. An optical antenna grating comprises: a waveguide that defines a guided mode of a second optical wave characterized by a second propagation constant associated with a second effective refractive index, and a grating structure configured to emit a portion of the second optical wave in a selected direction. The internal laser component and the optical antenna grating are configured to provide a relationship between the first effective refractive index and the second effective refractive index such that the selected direction is substantially insensitive to a change in a temperature of a thermal environment in which the internal laser component and the optical antenna grating are thermally coupled.

A laser apparatus may include: a mirror configured to reflect a laser beam; an actuator configured to operate the mirror; and a controller configured to transmit a movement instruction to the actuator, wherein the controller predicts a movement completion time of the actuator, and transmits a polling signal so that the actuator receives the polling signal after expiration of the predicted movement completion time.

The disclosed invention relates to an improved system and method for treatment of soft tissue, e.g., for treatment of a snoring condition. The system can include a laser source; a hand piece; and a device for directing radiation emitted by the laser source to a treatment area (e.g., an oral treatment area). In some cases, the handpiece can include an optical element (e.g., a lens) mounted within a replaceable cartridge and adapted to modulate a laser beam such that it is non-ablative, prior to its delivery to a treatment region. In various embodiments, the system includes a CO2 laser capable of performing treatment in a more efficient manner than conventional techniques.

Systems and methods for measuring temperature in an environment by creating a first beam having an energy of about 50 mJ/pulse, and a pulse duration of about 100 ps. A second beam is also created, having an energy of about 2.3 mJ/pulse, and a pulse duration of about 58 ps. The first beam and the second beam are directed into a probe region, thereby expressing an optical output. Properties of the optical output are measured at a sampling rate of at least about 100 kHz, and temperature measurements are derived from the measured properties of the optical output. Such systems and methods can be used to measure temperature in environments exhibiting highly turbulent and transient flow dynamics.

An apparatus for combining a plurality of coherent laser beams includes a splitting device configured to split an input laser beam into the plurality of coherent laser beams, a plurality of phase setting devices configured to adjust a respective phase of one of the plurality of coherent laser beams, and a beam combining device configured to combine the plurality of coherent laser beams, which emanate from a plurality of grid positions of a grid arrangement. The beam combining device includes a microlens arrangement having at least two microlens arrays. The apparatus further includes a controller configured to adjust a respective phase of a respective one of the plurality of coherent laser beams and/or vary a respective phase of a respective one of the plurality of coherent laser beams.

A reflective optical system (100) comprising at least one reflective aspheric surface (1) of focal length f.sub.0 and optical axis (Z), the surface being configured so that an incident laser beam (2) propagating along an axis (Z′) is focused along the optical axis (Z) with a FWHM ((Full Width at Half Maximum) of the intensity of the reflected beam along the optical axis (Z) being larger, preferably by a factor of at least 10, than the FWHM of the intensity of a focused beam reflected by a parabola having same focal length f.sub.0 and same optical axis (Z), receiving same beam.

A steerable laser transmitter and active situational awareness sensor that achieves SWaP-C, steering rate and spectral diversity improvements by scanning a beam with a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) Micro-Minor Array (MMA). One or more sections of non-linear material (NLM) positioned in the optical path (e.g. as annular sections around a conic mirror or as reflective optical coatings on the MMA) are used to convert the wavelength of the beam to a different wavelength while preserving the steering of the beam. The MEMS MMA may include piston actuation of the mirrors to shape the spot-beam.

A laser system may include one or more seed lasers to generate a pulsed seed beam including one or more laser pulses, a pulse pattern generator to generate an intermediate patterned burst-mode beam from at least one laser pulse from the pulsed seed beam, where the pulse pattern generator includes splits the at least one laser pulse from the pulsed seed beam along two or more delay paths and combines light along the two or more delay paths to a common optical path, and where the intermediate patterned burst-mode beam includes laser pulses with a selected pattern of inter-pulse spacings associated with the two or more delay paths. The laser system may further include power amplifiers to amplify the intermediate patterned burst-mode beam to form an amplified patterned burst-mode beam, where the amplified patterned burst-mode beam includes amplified laser pulses with the selected pattern of inter-pulse spacings.

An imaging system, includes: a laser light source having a wavelength from 380 nm to 490 nm; and a beam guidance element, the laser light source configured for generating an average surface power density of more than 10 W/cm.sup.2, the beam guidance element including a glass which has a quality factor F(436 nm)=S(436 nm)*(Abs.sub.0(436 nm)+Abs.sub.1(436 nm))/k, wherein S(436 nm) is a thermality at a wavelength of 436 nm, Abs.sub.1(436 nm) is an additional absorbance in comparison to Abs.sub.0(436 nm) at a wavelength of 436 nm after an irradiation with a power density of 345 W/cm.sup.2 for 72 hours with a laser light having a wavelength of 455 nm, Abs.sub.0(436 nm) is an absorbance at a wavelength of 436 nm of a sample having a thickness of 100 mm without the irradiation, k is the thermal conductivity, and the quality factor F(436 nm) is <15 ppm/W.