PHOTOREFRACTIVE BEAM-STEERING SYSTEM THAT USES ENERGY-TRANSFER IN A BATIO3 CRYSTAL FOR A FIBER-ARRAY INTERCONNECT

A beam-control system to write gratings on a holographic plane is stud ied. The arrangement is designed to interconnect two 1024 monomode fib er arrays. The beam-control system is composed of two subsystems: a be am steerer, which deflects one incident beam toward 1024 positions, an d a collimating system, which adapts the shape of the deflected beam t o the holographic plane. The collimating system was studied only after the beam steerer had been fully built and tested. It is based on the photorefractive amplification of a beamlet selected by a shutter array . The deflection efficiency is enhanced by a factor 1500 with the phot orefractive crystal, and the signal-to-noise ratio is larger than 5500 . The influence of the optical aberrations on the coupling losses of t he infrared beams in the monomode fibers are evaluated. (C) 1995 Optic al Society of America