CORRELATION OPTICAL VELOCIMETRY WITH A COMPACT-DISK PICKUP

The compact disk pickup is a consumer electronics component that can b e purchased for a low price owing to the great number of units produce d every year. A typical three-beam head contains, enclosed in a tiny c ase, a quite complete sample of what can be found in an optoelectronic s laboratory: a coherent source, a grating, a polarizing beam splitter , a fourth-wave plate, solid-state detectors, and much more. Exploitin g the unique features of such a device for scientific aims is intrigui ng rom many points of view. We present a straight forward application of a compact disk pickup to optical correlation velocimetry and show h ow a rather complicated discrete setup can be replaced successfully by this highly integrated component. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America .