Beam control for high-energy laser

devices
Paul H. Merritt
John R. Albertine

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

Optical Engineering 52(2), 021005 (February 2013)

Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Paul H. Merritt
Independent consultant
5608 Fair Oak Trail
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87109
E-mail: paulhmerritt@msn.com
John R. Albertine
Independent consultant
109 Kingswood Road
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Abstract. Beam-control systems for high-average-power lasers began in

the late 1960s and early 1970s. Early systems propagated the beams
across laboratories using heavy-water-cooled copper optics and openbeam trains with commercial fans to provide fresh air. They have evolved
in the intervening 40-plus years to include highly sophisticated gimbaledcontrol systems with extremely high-reflectance uncooled optics and
adaptive optics to compensate for less-than-ideal laser beams and for
atmospheric distortions. An overview of that evolution is presented.
2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.OE.52
.2.021005]

Subject terms: high-energy laser systems; beam control; pointing; tracking; beam
director.
Paper 120593SS received Apr. 24, 2012; revised manuscript received Jun. 7, 2012;
accepted for publication Jun. 8, 2012; published online Oct. 3, 2012.

1 Introduction and Definitions

The name beam control refers to that portion of a laser
system that starts with the generation of the laser beam inside
the laser gain generator, relays and aligns the laser beam
through the optical train, expands it using the pointing telescope, and then focuses it at the desired range on the target. It
includes the sensors and trackers, which acquire the target
and hold it stable in the field of view. Since the lasers
spot size at the target is generally much smaller than the target, the beam-control system must identify the desired aim
point on the target and place the beam at that desired location. It is also possible to include wavefront sensors and
deformable mirrors to improve the lasers beam quality prior
to propagation from the telescope (referred to as local loop
adaptive optics) or to compensate for atmosphere distortion
(referred to as target loop adaptive optics).
The measure of a beam-control systems performance
is its ability to maximize the beams average irradiance
(wattscm2 ) in the focused spot on the aim point and maintain it there while sufficient fluence (wattscm2 time or
joulescm2 ) is accumulated. The irradiance in this focused
spot is reduced by absorption losses in the beam-control
systems optical train, by spreading due to aberrations,
including jitter, in the optical train, and by absorption and
distortions during transmission through the atmosphere.
There are many contributors to the laser beams focused
spot size on the target. Assume a perfect (no aberrations)
optical train and an undistorted atmosphere. Also assume
that the laser beam leaving the telescope is circular with
no central obscuration and has a uniform irradiance with a
flat phase front. If the beam is perfectly focused at a desired
range in the far field (a distance > D2 ), the spot has a minimum diameter called its waist and then diverges past that
location. This is shown in Fig. 1.
The angle, d , is set by the aperture diameter, D, and the
wavelength, . The angle from the beam centerline to the
edge of the waist is determined by Eq. (1). The spot diameter,
d0 , is then determined by the angle and the distance to focus,
R, as in Eq. (2).
0091-3286/2013/$25.00 2013 SPIE

Optical Engineering

(1)

d0
R
d R 1.22 :
D
2

(2)

d 1.22

The edge of the beam is defined as the point where the lasers
electric field passes through zero for the first time. The irradiance is the square of the electric field. The mathematical
description of the electric field is a Bessel function of the first
kind. The irradiance is the square of the electric field. The
electric field and irradiance for a beam propagated from a
circular aperture are shown as Fig. 2.
The Bessel function is a rather difficult mathematical
description to use for equations describing the effectiveness
of a laser beam. An engineering approximation to the Bessel
function is a Gaussian curve that is curve fit to the exact
beam shape. A comparison of these two beams is shown
as Fig. 3.1
The equation for the Gaussian approximation of the
focused beam is
I I 0 e

2
2

(3)

where I 0 the peak value of the irradiance.

p
2
:

D
The peak irradiance, I 0 , can be calculated knowing the
power, aperture diameter, wavelength, and range, as,
I0

PD2
PA
2 2;
2
2
R
4 R

(4)

where the area, A, has been substituted for the area of the
aperture.
The above equations are the primary equations for the
perfect propagation of a laser beam in a vacuum and with
no jitter. We next consider the degradation of the beam

021005-1

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Fig. 1 Beam propagation showing the beam waist at focus.

when jitter broadens the time averaged irradiance pattern.

The peak irradiance including jitter can be derived to be
I0

PD2

4R2 2

1

 ;
2 j 2
1
2 D

(5)

where j is the standard deviation of the beam jitter, given

as an angle.
Equation (5) is very useful since the jittered beam has the
same terms on the right side as the beam without jitter, and
the jitter degradation is a multiplicative term. This degradation term is called the Strehl ratio due to jitter. Notice if the
jitter standard deviation is zero, this term collapses to one.
The time averaged beam is also broadened by the jitter, j ,
and it can be shown that the Gaussian variance for the jittered
beam is simply the sum of the beam variance and the jitter
variance. Using the subscript 0 for the unjittered beam,
and the subscript b for the jittered beam,
2b 20 2j :

(6)

Strehl ratio terms are obtained for many of the components

of the pointing and tracking beam, like the local loop jitter,
the device jitter, and the tracking jitter, and then multiplied
by the ideal on axis irradiance to estimate the time averaged
on-axis irradiance.
One more equation that is often used in the pointing and
tracking analysis is an equation that estimates the Strehl ratio
due to higher order aberrations. The aberrations are distortions in the wavefront and contained within the boundaries
of the beam. Jitter describes how the entire beam moves,
while higher-order aberrations describe how the wavefront
distorts. The higher-order Strehl is calculated by measuring

Fig. 3 Comparison
approximation.

of

Bessel

beam

shape and

Gaussian

the imperfections of the wavefront surface called optical path

differences across the beam. The standard deviation of these
measurements is then identified as HO . This value is then
used in an equation called the Marechal approximation to
obtain a Strehl ratio.
SHO e HO :
2

(7)

This Strehl ratio is multiplied by the on-axis irradiance the

same as the jitter Strehl ratios.
The equations given here are the primary equations used
by beam-control calculations to define the performance of a
laser pointing system. However, the actual performance
numbers are primarily based on the design of the pointing
system and the architecture the builder decided to use.
Consider, in general, how the components of a pointing
and tracking system fit together.
Figure 4 is a cartoon of the gimbaled portion of a beamcontrol system to illustrate basic servo-control functions.
A tracking telescope and optical sensor are mounted on
the elevation over azimuth gimbal. Their purpose is to generate an electronic image of the target and send it to the

Fig. 2 The electric field and irradiance patterns of a focused laser beam.

Optical Engineering

021005-2

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Fig. 4 A basic pointing and tracking gimbaled system.

tracker. This tracker is a special-purpose computer, which

then processes the target image, identifies the desired aim
point, and measures the angle between it and the optical
boresight of the telescope. Its output is a command to the
gimbals to rotate until the optical axis of the tracking telescope is following the target and pointing at the aim
point. If the gimbals are mounted on a moving or vibrating
platform, these disturbances introduce additional tracking
errors. Unlike target motion, this base motion disturbance
can be directly measured using gyros and accelerometers,
which are attached to the telescope.
The cartoon in Fig. 4 shows a gyro used to measure the
inertial motion of the telescope. However, the way it is
shown, mounted on the telescope it would be sensitive to
any vibration modes in the structure. One way to avoid
this coupling could be to use an inertial reference unit
(IRU) that includes a stable platform independent of the telescope structure. The HEL, shown simply in this cartoon as a
box, provides the weapon beam to a pointing telescope,
which is then mechanically boresighted (optical axis made
parallel) to the tracking telescope. As shown in the cartoon,
the HEL is mounted on the telescope, most systems have the
HEL mounted off the telescope and coupled into the telescope by a beam path that enters the telescope along the rotation axes. Finally, the range to the target must be measured so
that a parallax correction can be applied to the pointing telescope. This slightly tilts its optical axis to intersect the tracking telescopes optical axis at the range of the target and thus
place the HEL beam on the aim point.
2 Review of Hardware Systems
A wide variety of pointing and tracking systems have been
demonstrated over the past 40 years. The first laser system
that combined all the features needed in a pointing and tracking system was the Experimental Laser Device (XLD) system test at the Pratt and Whitney Company in West Palm
Beach, Florida, in 1968.2 DARPA contracted MIT Lincoln
Laboratories to put together a team of engineers to build
a system that would propagate a high-power laser beam
and investigate all the beam control problems under real
world conditions. The team was led by Dr. Louis Marquet
of Lincoln Laboratories and included engineers from the
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and Pratt and
Optical Engineering

Fig. 5 The experimental laser device test facility and range in Florida.

Whitney Co. An aerial view of the laser facility is shown

as Fig. 5.
The laser device and the pointing and tracking system
were in the building on the left of the figure. The very
basic pointing and tracking system are shown in Fig. 6.
The test series investigated tracking, pointing, focusing,
thermal blooming, and atmospheric distortions with a slewing beam to a moving target. The row of large room fans seen
in Fig. 6 are the first efforts to provide beam path conditioning to a high-power laser beam. The gimbaled flat pointed
the beam at a down-range target board that was mounted
on an instrumented railroad car, known as the Everglazer,
which could be moved while being tracked. This target
board is shown in Fig. 7.
This large and distributed laser test system was not something that could be mounted in a vehicle as a weapon, but the
test series investigated an large number of critical laser system problems that would all be studied for years afterward.
These included pointing, tracking, jitter control, higher order
aberrations, adaptive optics, and beam diagnostics. This test
introduced many of the later concepts of beam control,
although the packaging of the system needed many changes
to support an effective weapon.

021005-3

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Fig. 8 Field test telescope on North Oscura Peak (WSMR, NM)

Fig. 6 The pointing and tracking telescope and gimbaled turning flat
at the XLD.

Fig. 9 The Airborne Laser Laboratory with the APT pointing and
tracking system.

Fig. 7 The moveable target board for the XLD test series.

The first HEL-capable beam director built for Department

of Defense (DoD) was the Field Test Telescope (FTT).3 It
was delivered to the Air Force about 1970 by Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon), El Segundo, CA. It was a three-gimbal
mount (outer and inner azimuth plus elevation). The HEL
beam entered the beam director from the bottom along
the azimuth axis of rotation and was routed up and around
one of the side arms with folding mirrors. It entered the telescope along the elevation axis of rotation and used a steering
mirror to turn the beam and point it at the secondary mirror.
The FTT was first used with the Air Forces Tri Service Laser
in a series of experiments called the DELTA tests and successfully shot down a drone aircraft in flight. This beam
director has been used for many purposes since and is
still in service. It is shown in Fig. 8 when it was installed
on North Oscura Peak (WSMR, NM) for low power tracking
tests in the mid-1970s. This system was the first demonstration of a coarse and fine gimbal to reduce line-of-sight jitter.
It also used a gyro on the inner gimbals to inertially stabilize
the pointing telescope.
The gimbal concept demonstrated by the FTT was used
for the Air Forces Airborne Pointer Tracker (APT) and
the Navys Navy Pointer Tracker (NPT); however, an additional gimbal was added. Both beam directors were built by
Hughes Aircraft in the mid-1970s and were similar in design.
Optical Engineering

They both had four gimbals: coarse azimuth and elevation

gimbals for large angular coverage plus fine azimuth and elevation gimbals that were inertially stabilized using gyros.
They also both had tracking telescopes mounted to the
inner gimbals but with their own line-of-sight optics. Figure 9
is a picture of the APT mounted on top of the KC-135 aircraft. The complete system was called the Airborne Laser
Laboratory (ALL). Figure 9 shows the ALL with both the
forward and aft fairing installed. The forward fairing was
later removed and replaced with a much smaller fillet-like
fairing. There were several experiments on the ALL that
measured the aero-optical effects of the airflow around the
turret and how it affected the propagation of the laser
beam. Figure 10 shows the ALLs optical train, which
includes the APT.
The APT introduced several beam-control concepts.
Note the beam angle sensor in the lower section of the APT.
Additionally, there is a translation sensor just past the aerodynamic window close to the laser device. These sensors
measured tilt and translation between the laser device and
the base of the APT and used beam steering mirror #1 and
#2 (Fig. 10) to keep the beam well aligned with the base of
the APT.
Another alignment system controlled the beam from the
base of the APT to the output beam expander. This system

021005-4

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Fig. 10 The airborne pointer tracker and local beam-control system used in the Airborne Laser Laboratory.

consisted of the autoalignment autocollimator in the base

of the APT and the autoalignment reference annulus mirror
on the beam expander. This system sent a cylindrical beam
around the outside of the HEL beam and measured the tilt
through the beam path from the base to the output beam
expander.
The inertial reference was obtained by a gyro on the back
of the primary mirror that used the inner gimbal and beam
steering mirror #3, in the beam expander, to keep the outgoing beam inertially stable. This system proved to be a
problem area. The beam-expanding telescope had several
vibration bending modes and the autoalignment reference
annulus flexed so much that the autoalignment system did
not adequately measure or control the jitter on the output
beam. A fix for this was to replace the autoalignment annulus
mirror with a flat annulus mirror mounted around the secondary mirror. This meant the alignment system no longer measured the motion of the primary mirror, but it permitted
operation of the system through the final flight tests.
Optical Engineering

There were also test flights that removed the output window
from the APT to see if the airflow around the turret would
permit propagating a beam without using the window. The
result was that an acoustic mode existed in the open port,
which significantly increased the jitter of the output beam.
The output window was flown for the remaining flight tests.
Figure 11 is a (reversed) photograph of the NPT.4 The
70-cm HEL telescope is in the center with an eyelid over
it, the 40-cm tracking telescope is on the left, and a laser
range-finder aperture can be seen the upper right. This beam
director, combined with the Navy-ARPA Chemical Laser,
successfully shot down of several Army TOW Missiles
in 1978.
The servo/gimbal concept described for the APT was used
in all Hughes Aircraft beam-control systems, including the
NPT, until 1980. At that point, there was a desire for higherperformance systems using larger pointing telescopes but
needing lower jitter. This conflicting set of requirements
(larger diameter telescopes while having higher structural

021005-5

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Fig. 11 Navy pointer tracker.

Fig. 13 Cutaway sketch of the SeaLite Beam Director.

Fig. 12 The SeaLite Beam director at White Sands Missile Range,

New Mexico.

resonant frequencies) was first resolved in the Sealite Beam

Director (SLBD) shown in Fig. 12 and with a cutaway view
in Fig. 13.
The inner elevation and azimuth gimbals were eliminated,
and a 150-cm telescope was hard-mounted directly on the
elevation gimbal. Instead of using the inner gimbal as the
inertial reference, a separate low mass IRU was used.
This IRU was a small assembly consisting of a gyro and
a flexible mount to as an inertially stable platform, which
provided the line-of-sight reference for the alignment system. The IRU was mounted behind the secondary mirror
Optical Engineering

of the pointing telescope. Using an optical reference mirror

attached to the IRU, its measurement of the base motion
disturbance was relayed to the SLBDs optical alignment
sensors, which then commanded small fast steering mirrors
to stabilize the HEL beam. The large telescope was allowed
to experience the base motion disturbance even though the
HEL beam passing through it was stabilized. The SLBD was
delivered to the Navy at High Energy Laser System Test
Facility (HELSTF), White Sands Missile Range (WSMR),
New Mexico, in 1984 and mated with the Mid-Infrared
Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL). It remained operational until 2009.
Figure 13 shows the routing of HEL beam through the
gimbals and into the beam-expanding telescope. Note that
the beam was aligned along the center of the azimuth and
elevation bearings. When the gimbal is rotated, the beam
also rotates relative to the beam train, but stays aligned
with the outgoing beam path. The beam path entering the
beam expander is rather complex; after entering the beam
expander tube, the beam reflects off of a relay mirror to the
tertiary and then to the secondary. Beam expansion occurs
between the secondary and primary mirrors. Figure 14 is
an optical schematic of the SLBD beam control system,
which shows the various optical subsystems required by the
beam director.
It can be seen in Fig. 14 that the SLBD had a separate lineof-sight for the tracker imager. The tracker and the outgoing
beam were aligned with a clever optical rhomb that used
periscope #1 and #2 to measure the relative angle between
the two systems and adjust for any tracking misalignment
from the outgoing beam. The SLBD was later modified to
utilize shared aperture tracking. Note the red autoalignment
beam was injected into the center of the high-power beam
instead of surrounding the beam as had been used in the
APT and the NPT. The SLBD successfully demonstrated
the benefits of using an IRU (labeled Gyro Reference Package in the figure) for beam stabilization; the problems of
structural resonances in the beam expander were minimized.5

021005-6

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Fig. 14 The optical paths used in the beam control system of the SLBD.

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Optical Engineering

021005-7

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

Fig. 15 Images of a boosting missile before and during an active

illumination from the SLBD.

Fig. 16 MDA airborne laser in a Boeing 747-400F.

It also successfully demonstrated shared aperture tracking

and tracking of highly dynamic flying targets.
The MIRACL, not shown in the figures, was mated with
the SLBD and used to demonstrate an adaptive optics system, which reduced the phase aberrations in the MIRACL
beam. In 1997, the SLBD demonstrated the acquisition
and active track of a boosting missile. This was one of
the demonstrations required by the DoD prior to approving
the plans for the airborne laser system. The techniques of
active tracking, e.g., illuminating the target by projecting
a low power laser beam to flood-light the target, had been
proposed but never demonstrated in hardware. Figure 15
shows three different images acquired during active tracking
of a boosting missile.
By the mid-1990s, SDI (then called the Missile Defense
Agency) had terminated almost all of its HEL programs to
better focus on interceptor missile development. The only
major surviving MDA HEL program was the Airborne
Laser (ABL). Its purpose was to place a MW-class chemical
oxygen-iodine laser system in a Boeing 747-400F (Fig. 16)
to demonstrate boost phase intercept of intercontinental ballistic missiles and intermediate range ballistic missiles such
as Scuds.
The ABL incorporated beam-control technologies that
had been developed over the previous 20 years, with
many lessons coming from the ALL and the Sea Lite
Beam Director. The IRU concept of the SLBD was included
in the beam-control system, but the small stable platform was
placed behind the primary mirror where the structure was

Fig. 17 A simplified diagram of the optical paths used in the beam control system for the airborne laser.

Optical Engineering

021005-8

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

In February 2010, the ABL successfully engaged two

boosting missiles. However, the program was scaled back
in 2011 and the aircraft was sent to the long-term storage
facility at David-Monthon Air Force Base outside of Tucson,
Arizona, in 2012.
There have been other laser systems built over the last 10
years, including the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL)
built for the Army by TRW, shown in Fig. 18, and the
Advanced Tactical Laser, built by Boeing, shown in
Fig. 19. These systems used beam-control approaches
already discussed in this paper.
3 Future Systems
With the development of fiber lasers, the future may hold
the opportunity for new beam-control systems. The Naval
Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, Virginia, built a
small laser demonstrator, called the Laser Weapon System
(LaWS), which used six off-the-shelf 5.5 kW IPG Photonics Yb:YAG fiber lasers and a modified commercial telescope mounted on a commercial KTM tracking mount
(Fig. 20). The six beams are incoherently combined at
the target. Instead of routing the HEL beam through a
beam path in the beam directors gimbals, the output
fibers from the six lasers were brought directly to the output
telescope.
Future laser systems built with fiber lasers may include
coherently combined beams from fiber lasers. A squarelaw increase in far field irradiance, instead of incoherent
combinations linear increase, can be obtained.

Fig. 18 The THEL laser system built by TRW for the army.

References
Fig. 19 The advanced tactical laser built by Boeing and integrated
into a C-130 aircraft.

much more rigid than the secondary mirror mount. There

were two adaptive optics systems, one to clean up the outgoing beam and one to compensate for the atmosphere.
There were two illuminators used in the ABL, one for a beacon return for the correction of the atmosphere, and one for
flood illumination to track the target. A schematic of the
ABL beam train is included as Fig. 17.

Fig. 20 The LaWS system using six fiber lasers.

Optical Engineering

1. P. H. Merritt, Beam Control for Laser Systems, Directed Energy

Professional Society, Albuquerque, New Mexico (2012).
2. R. W. Duffner, The Adaptive Optics Revolution, The University of
New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico (2009).
3. R. W. Duffner, Airborne Laser, Bullets of Light, Plenum Press,
New York, NY (1997).
4. J. R. Albertine, State of the Art & Evolution of HEL Weapons, privately
published report, Annapolis, Maryland (2009).
5. G. P. Perram et al., Introduction to Laser Weapon Systems,
Directed Energy Professional Society, Albuquerque, New Mexico
(2010).
Paul H. Merritt has a BS in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University,
and a masters and PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico.
He began working on laser systems in
1974 with Air Force Civil Service at Kirtland
AFB in Albuquerque, NM. The first major
laser program he worked on was the Airborne
Laser Laboratory (ALL) that successfully
demonstrated the shoot down of AIM-9 missiles and drone aircraft. His work primarily
involved analysis and testing of the control systems. He has worked
on several laser programs since the ALL including the Sealite Beam
Director, the Space Based Laser, the Tactical High Energy Laser, and
the Airborne Laser. He retired from civil service in 1997 and worked for
several years for Boeing-SVS in Albuquerque. He then taught control
theory classes at the University of New Mexico for seven years. He is
a fellow of SPIE and a senior technical fellow with Boeing. He developed a class on beam control for the Directed Energy Professional
Society (DEPS) during his work at Boeing and has taught the
class for about 9 years at DEPS symposiums. He recently published
a book for the DEPS entitled Beam Control for Laser Systems. He has
written many papers on laser beam control and contributed chapters
to three other books on laser systems. He now works part time for
Schafer Corporation.

021005-9

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)

Merritt and Albertine: Beam control for high-energy laser devices

John R. Albertine has a BS in physics from

Rose Polytechnic Institute and a masters in
applied physics from Johns Hopkins University with research in satellite navigation. He
began working with precision tracking, optical
propagation, and high power lasers in the
early 1970s while at the space division of
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
In 1976, he joined the Navys High Energy
Laser Program Office where he led the development, integration and test of the first

Optical Engineering

megawatt-class laser system in the US. He retired from government

service in 1997 and began independent technical consulting for the
defense department. He has been a technical advisor to the high
energy laser joint technology office for over 10 years and chaired
the independent review team for the AirBorne Laser Program. He
was a member of the National Academy of Sciences study on free
electron laser technology and a member of the Air Force Scientific
Advisory Board. He is a fellow of DEPS.

021005-10

Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 01/21/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

February 2013/Vol. 52(2)