In this work, a novel electro-optic beam switch (EOBS) is designed, fabricated and demonstrated. The EOBS presented in this work is designed for a Nd:YAG laser operating at λ = 1064 nm and is demonstrated to achieve >750 μm of beam translation at switching rates of up to 3 Hz.
The EOBS consists of a series of electronically controlled prisms fabricated by ferroelectric domain inversion in an electro-optic crystal wafer. The prisms are arranged such that positive angular deflections are counterbalanced by subsequent negative angular deflections. The result is discrete beam translation with no angular deflection.
In this work, an algorithm for designing optimal beam translation geometries is developed. Five of the resulting geometric designs are then
fabricated in 5 mol% magnesium oxide doped congruent lithium niobate (5%MgO:CLN). The performance of one particular geometry is modeled in detail and analyzed experimentally. The EOBS is used to demonstrate wavelength tuning of a near-infrared laser system using a selectable optical parametric generation (OPG) grating.