Experimental damage thresholds of a laser suppression imaging system using a cubic phase plate

Abstract

The development of laser systems leads to an increasing threat to photoelectric imaging sensors. A cubic phase plate wavefront coding imaging system is proposed to reduce the risk of damage owing to intense laser radiation. Based on the wavefront coding imaging model, the diffracted spot profile and the light intensity distribution on the observation plane are simulated. An experimental device is set up to measure the laser-induced damage thresholds and investigate the morphology of laser-induced damage patterns of the conventional and the wavefront encoding imaging system. Simulations and experimental results manifest the superior laser suppression performance of the proposed method, which can help diminish the undesirable effects of laser irradiation on an imaging sensor.

Laser protection by using vortex wavefront coding imaging system

“…28 Experimental studies show that the cubic phase mask can effectively improve the laser damage threshold of the imaging system. 29 Phase mask is the key component of the wavefront coding imaging system, which determines the focal depth extension, imaging quality, and laser protection performance of the imaging system. At present, the research on the laser blinding protection capability of the vortex phase mask has the problems of restricted scenarios and insufficiently scientific evaluation indices and is still limited to plane waves, with no relevant research carried out for Gaussian beams, and consideration of more comprehensive scenarios and reasonable evaluation indices can more thoroughly help to understand the laser protection performance of the vortex phase mask.…”