| During the past few years the Monoblock laser has become the laser-of-choice for laser range-finders. It's eye-safe 1570 nm emission, high pulse energy, simple construction, and high efficiency, when pumped by a laser-diode stack, provide advantages that are not available with other laser types. Although the relative divergence of the Monoblock output beam is large, it can be reduced to the required <1 mR using a telescope with a large magnification. This solution, however, is not acceptable for applications where the laser and telescope size must be kept to a minimum.;A simple and compact technique for achieving significant reduction in the Monoblock beam divergence using a partial reflector that is placed a short distance from the optical parametric oscillator (OPO) has been developed. Using an ultra-compact 38 mm Monoblock with a 10 mm long KTP OPO, we achieved a beam divergence of 2.5 X reduction from the unmodified laser. Modeling and experimental results are presented detailing the theory and performance for this novel technique. |
