OPTICAL ARRAY GENERATION AND INTERCONNECTION USING BIREFRINGENT SLABS

The use of double refraction in cascaded slabs of birefringent media f or generating arrays of beams or spots is described. Arrays containing 2n beams are obtained for each incident beam by use of n slabs. The d ensity, redundancy, and coherence of existing beam arrays can be modif ied with this technique. Input beams with spatially nonuniform amplitu des may be used, and both efficiency and array uniformity can exceed 9 5%. This approach is also useful for optical interconnection and can p roduce many patterns of beam location and polarization. Interconnects including compact split-and-shifts can be realized, and reconfigurable weights or patterns are also possible. The low dispersion of many bir efringent materials makes this technique useful for broad-spectrum or wavelength multiplexed arrays. Trade-offs in the implementation are di scussed, and experiments demonstrating the technique are presented.