This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 9577 including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Conference Committee listing.

Advanced Mirror Technology Development (AMTD) is being done at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in preparation for the next Ultraviolet, Optical, Infrared (UVOIR) space observatory. A likely science mission of that observatory is the detection and characterization of ‘Earth-like’ exoplanets. Direct exoplanet observation requires a telescope to see a planet that is 10^-10 times dimmer than its host star. To accomplish this using an internal coronagraph requires a telescope with an ultra-stable wavefront. This paper investigates two topics: 1) parametric relationships between a primary mirror’s thermal parameters and wavefront stability, and 2) optimal temperature profiles in the telescope’s shroud and heater plate that minimize static wavefront error (WFE) in the primary mirror.

Analytical tools and processes are being developed at NASA Marshal Space Flight Center in support of the Advanced Mirror Technology Development (AMTD) project. One facet of optical performance is mechanical stability with respect to structural dynamics. Pertinent parameters are: (1) the spacecraft structural design, (2) the mechanical disturbances on-board the spacecraft (sources of vibratory/transient motion such as reaction wheels), (3) the vibration isolation systems (invariably required to meet future science needs), and (4) the dynamic characteristics of the optical system itself. With stability requirements of future large aperture space telescopes being in the lower Pico meter regime, it is paramount that all sources of mechanical excitation be considered in both feasibility studies and detailed analyses. The primary objective of this paper is to lay out a path to perform feasibility studies of future large aperture space telescope projects which require extreme stability. To get to that end, a high level overview of a structural dynamic analysis process to assess an integrated spacecraft and optical system is included.

A common mechanical failure in optical systems is inadequate stiffness in the supporting structure. Stiffness is crucial for maintaining the alignment of the optical elements and achieving adequate optical performance. It is the responsibility of the mechanical engineer to provide adequate stiffness in the mechanical design. Optical engineers assume that their large-displacement non-linear codes are required to analyze the perturbations caused by mechanical deflections. However, the permitted deflections of the optical elements are usually quite small, on the order of microns for structures of meter-sized dimensions. For perturbations of this magnitude it may be shown that a non-linear solver is not required for engineering accuracies. In fact, it can be argued that the optical functions are more linear than the solid mechanics functions, of which the finite element method itself is but a linear simplification. Unified optomechanical modeling provides a vehicle for tracing offending image motions to particular optical elements and their supporting structure. The unified modeling method imports the optical elements’ imaging properties into a finite element structural model of the optical system. It convolves the elements’ motions and their optical properties in a single optomechanical modeling medium, unifying them. This provides the engineer with a tool that discloses each element’s contribution to the offending motions of the image on the detector. This paper presents the theory of unified optomechanical modeling as applied to the optical line-of-sight in a Nastran1 finite element model. The steps used in developing a unified optomechanical model are described in detail. Comparisons of the unified modeling technique to both analytical and empirical validation studies are shown.

Analyzing the structure of precision motion platform, building mathematical model of linear motors and voice coil motors, thereby macro-micro coupling theoretical models and mechanical model are established, which can reflect the combined effect of multiple motors motion characteristics. The unknown parameters of the macro-micro coupling theoretical model are identified by adaptive real-coded genetic algorithm. Validity of the precision motion platform model has been verified by simulations.

This paper discusses applications and implementation approaches used for integrated modeling of structural systems with optics over the past 30 years. While much of the development work focused on control system design, significant contributions were made in system modeling and computer-aided design (CAD) environments. Early work appended handmade line-of-sight models to traditional finite element models, such as the optical spacecraft concept from the ACOSS program. The IDEAS² computational environment built in support of Space Station collected a wider variety of existing tools around a parametric database. Later, IMOS supported interferometer and large telescope mission studies at JPL with MATLAB modeling of structural dynamics, thermal analysis, and geometric optics. IMOS’s predecessor was a simple FORTRAN command line interpreter for LQG controller design with additional functions that built state-space finite element models. Specialized language systems such as CAESY were formulated and prototyped to provide more complex object-oriented functions suited to control-structure interaction. A more recent example of optical modeling directly in mechanical CAD is used to illustrate possible future directions. While the value of directly posing the optical metric in system dynamics terms is well understood today, the potential payoff is illustrated briefly via project-based examples. It is quite likely that integrated structure thermal optical performance (STOP) modeling could be accomplished in a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) tool set. The work flow could be adopted, for example, by a team developing a small high-performance optical or radio frequency (RF) instrument.

The field of non-imaging optics is currently a diverse and fertile ground for innovation and analysis. Modeling systems for illumination and stray light effects influences a wide variety of electrical, optical, mechanical, material science, and system design decisions. Applications are also diverse in non-imaging including not only modeling these effects in imaging systems, but also important technologies such as solar energy, illumination, and projection systems, to name just a few areas of interest. Although design and analysis for illumination and stray light problems are both done in nonsequential ray-tracing programs, many practitioners only operate in one arena. Furthermore, the tasks associated with each of these types of problems have both similarities and distinct features. The goal of this paper is to provide a wide audience, including experts and people new to the field, an overview of the differences and similarities in modeling these two different (yet alike) types of problem.

The Point Spread Function (PSF) is a key figure of merit for specifying the angular resolution of optical systems and, as the demand for higher and higher angular resolution increases, the problem of surface finishing must be taken seriously even in optical telescopes. From the optical design of the instrument, reliable ray-tracing routines allow computing and display of the PSF based on geometrical optics. However, such an approach does not directly account for the scattering caused by surface micro-roughness, which is interferential in nature. Although the scattering effect can be separately modeled, its inclusion in the ray-tracing routine requires assumptions that are difficult to verify. In that context, a purely physical optics approach is more appropriate as it remains valid regardless of the shape and size of the defects appearing on the optical surface. Such a computation, when performed in two-dimensional consideration, is memory and time consuming because it requires one to process a surface map with a few micron resolution, and the situation becomes even more complicated in case of optical systems characterized by more than one reflection. Fortunately, the computation is significantly simplified in far-field configuration, since the computation involves only a sequence of Fourier Transforms. In this paper, we provide validation of the PSF simulation with Physical Optics approach through comparison with real PSF measurement data in the case of ASTRI-SST M1 hexagonal segments. These results represent a first foundation stone for future development in a more advanced computation taking into account micro-roughness and multiple reflection in optical systems.

Proposed twenty-five years ago specifically for stray light computations, a general BRDF model that automatically enforces continuity, positivity, reciprocity, and isotropic surface symmetry over all possible input/output directions has been implemented in commercial optical analysis codes. It was originally motivated by the need to fit (and possibly catalogue) measured BRDFs of everything from polished optical surfaces to rough diffuse blacks, reasonably extend inplane only data to out-of-plane, reduce hundreds or thousands of measurement points to a relatively small number of parameters (like glass dispersion formulas), and cleanup “sloppy” data or models that violate physical constraints. However, there is little attempt to relate the BRDF to any actual surface structure or statistics (the inverse problem). As application examples, the model successfully fits several thousand measured data points on a “glossy” anodized Aluminum sample to a 100-coefficient form and several dozen measured data points on Aeroglaze Z306 diffuse black paint to a general 20-coefficient form then probably the simplest 2-parameter model. Variations and other general BRDF models are also proposed.

Diffractive optical elements are important components to many high precision optical systems. When such systems are subjected to mechanical loading these optical components yield performance degradation contributions quite different from non-diffractive optical components. It is of interest to predict by analysis such performance degradations for the purposes of development of the optomechanical design for relevant optical systems. The developments of this paper are to characterize the changes in phase due to such deformations as predicted by the finite element method and represent them in optical analysis alongside characterizations of surface shape changes.

Optical performance monitoring (OPM) becomes an inviting topic in high speed optical communication networks. In this paper, a novel technique of OPM based on a new elaborated computation approach of singular spectrum analysis (SSA) for time series prediction is presented. Indeed, various optical impairments among chromatic dispersion (CD), polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise are a major factors limiting quality of transmission data in the systems with data rates lager than 40 Gbit/s. This technique proposed an independent and simultaneous multi-impairments monitoring, where we used SSA of time series analysis and forecasting. It has proven their usefulness in the temporal analysis of short and noisy time series in several fields, that it is based on the singular value decomposition (SVD). Also, advanced optical modulation formats (100 Gbit/s non-return-to zero dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying (NRZ-DP-QPSK) and 160 Gbit/s DP-16 quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-16QAM)) offering high spectral efficiencies have been successfully employed by analyzing their asynchronously sampled amplitude. The simulated results proved that our method is efficient on CD, first-order PMD, Q-factor and OSNR monitoring, which enabled large monitoring ranges, the CD in the range of 170-1700 ps/nm.Km and 170-1110 ps/nm.Km for 100 Gbit/s NRZ-DP-QPSK and 160 Gbit/s DP-16QAM respectively, and also the DGD up to 20 ps is monitored. We could accurately monitor the OSNR in the range of 10-40 dB with monitoring error remains less than 1 dB in the presence of large accumulated CD.

Homodyne laser interferometers for velocimetry are well-known optical systems used in many applications. While the detector power output signal of such a system, using a long coherence length laser and a single target, is easily modelled using the Doppler shift, scenarios with a short coherence length source, e.g. an unstabilized semiconductor laser, and multiple weak targets demand a more elaborated approach for simulation. Especially when using fiber components, the actual setup is an important factor for system performance as effects like return losses and multiple way propagation have to be taken into account. If the power received from the targets is in the same region as stray light created in the fiber setup, a complete system simulation becomes a necessity. In previous work, a phasor based signal simulation approach for interferometers based on short coherence length laser sources has been evaluated. To facilitate the use of the signal simulation, a fiber component ray tracer has since been developed that allows the creation of input files for the signal simulation environment. The software uses object oriented MATLAB code, simplifying the entry of different fiber setups and the extension of the ray tracer. Thus, a seamless way from a system description based on arbitrarily interconnected fiber components to a signal simulation for different target scenarios has been established. The ray tracer and signal simulation are being used for the evaluation of interferometer concepts incorporating delay lines to compensate for short coherence length.

In this paper, a fiber-optic radiation sensor (FORS) was developed to measure gamma rays from the radionuclides frequently found in radioactively contaminated soil. The sensing probe of the FORS was made of an inorganic (Lu,Y)₂SiO₅:Ce (LYSO:Ce) scintillator, a mixture of epoxy resin and hardener and a plastic fiber. The FORS was applied to measure gamma rays from Cs-137 source (1.1 μCi) in a disk shape. Also, MCNP simulation was performed for the same geometry as that in the experimental setup. Comparison between measurements by the FORS and MCNP simulation showed that the detection efficiency of the fiber-optic sensor was about 19.2%. The FORS is expected to be useful in measuring gamma rays from the radioactive soil at nuclear facility site.

The modeling of a temperature optical fiber sensor is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this work. The suggested structure to obtain the sensing temperature characteristics is by the use of a mechanically induced Long Period Fiber Grating (LPFG) on a tapered single mode optical fiber. A biconical fiber optic taper is made by applying heat using an oxygen-propane flame burner while stretching the single mode fiber (SMF) whose coating has been removed. The resulting geometry of the device is important to analyze the coupling between the core mode to the cladding modes, and this will determine whether the optical taper is adiabatic or non-adiabatic. On the other hand, the mechanical LPFG is made up of two plates, one grooved and other flat, the grooved plate was done on an acrylic slab with the help of a computerized numerical control machine (CNC). In addition to the experimental work, the supporting theory is also included.

A low-cost and high-resolution interrogation scheme for a long-period fiber grating (LPG) temperature sensor with adjustable temperature range has been designed, developed and tested. In general LPGs are widely used as optical sensors and can be used as optical edge filters to interrogate the wavelength encoded signal from sensors such as fiber Bragg grating (FBG) by converting it into intensity modulated signal. But the interrogation of LPG sensors using FBG is a bit novel and it is to be studied experimentally. The sensor works based on measurement of shift in attenuation band of LPG corresponding to the applied temperature. The wavelength shift of LPG attenuation band is monitored using an optical spectrum analyser (OSA). Further the bulk and expensive OSA is replaced with a low-cost interrogation system that employ an FBG, photodiode and a transimpedance amplifier (TIA). The designed interrogation scheme makes the system low-cost, fast in response, and also enhances its resolution up to 0.1°C. The measurable temperature range using the proposed scheme is limited to 120 °C. However this range can be shifted within 15-450 °C by means of adjusting the Bragg wavelength of FBG.

A new concept for the realization of a micro optical laser gyroscope was developed. This new concept involves a passive free space ring resonator in which the light is circulating by reflections at three double mirrors and an external light source to activate the resonator. To couple the light in and out of the resonator waveguide-couplers are employed. This paper reports on the simulation of waveguide-coupler structures and on experimental investigation of coupling efficiency using micro fabricated SU-8 coupler structures. The modeled coupler structures consist of two parallel waveguides. The waveguides with rectangular profile are in close proximity i.e. separated only by a narrow gap over a certain path length Waveguide-coupler structures with similar geometries have been micro fabricated and optically characterized. It has been found that as a consequence of the lithographic formation of SU-8 high aspect ratio waveguides residual SU- 8 material remains between the waveguides as the gaps become very small (below 5 μm). In these structures a parasitic connection between the two parallel waveguides could be identified. No coupling effect was observed in the micro fabricated devices with perfect gap separation. From comparison of simulations and experiments we can conclude that there is a coupling mechanism based on the residual SU-8 material bridging the separation gap. Bridging allows coupling light at gaps even larger than 1 μm. Such residual material coupling can be achieved with SU8 lithographic high aspect ratio structuring (height 30 μm x width 50 μm or height 30 μm x width 20 μm) in which sub μm-gaps are almost impossible to produce with standard technologies.