Note: Lossless laser beam combiner employing a high-speed rotating half-wave plate.

ABSTRACT

We have developed a laser beam combiner employing a high-speed rotating half-wave plate based on the specific requirements of the Thomson scattering measurement systems in the ITER. The polarization extinction ratio of the output beam may exceed 1000 and was maintained for more than 1 h via feedback control of the half-wave plate rotation speed. The pointing fluctuations introduced by rotating the half-wave plate were in the order of microradians. The high-speed rotating half-wave plate provides a lossless means of combining laser beams together with stable beam pointing.