Solaris Optics
Solaris Optics offers a wide range of in-house manufactured optical elements both unmounted or mounted: windows, wedges, lenses, prisms, with standard or custom tolerances. The company is based in Józefów, Poland.
Solaris Optics offers a wide range of custom optics including:
Additionally, the company provides value-added research & development as well as thin film coating services.
On-Trak is Solaris Optics’s distribution partner for North America.
PRODUCTS
Gradient Filters
Gradient filter is a kind of filter that changes its spectral properties along one dimension. For each physical point along one-dimension spectral curve is shifted in wavelength domain. Solaris Optics has already designed and produced a few different products and one of them is gradient filter that is a part of Sentinel-5 space project.
Beamsplitters & Beamcombiners
The tasks of optical dividers are to combine or to distribute light beams of determined properties in some special way, depending on application. Such an effect is obtained due to the use of optically active materials or interference coatings. On the basis of application one can choose kind of divider, its shape and material.
Pockels Cells & Q-Switch
Operation of electrooptic modulators is based on the principle of induced birefringence. Pockels cell is a device which can produce controllable birefringence by applying voltage to the cell. The cell contains uniaxial crystal, which becomes biaxial when electric field is applied. If new axes induced by the applied electric field are at 45° to the plane of polarization of the incident beam, the incident beam is split into two equal orthogonally polarized components. They propagate in a crystal with different velocities because of induced different refraction indices. Induced birefringence Δn is proportional to the applied electric field and on the crystal length l it gives controlled phase retardation Γ between these components, which is used for the incident beam polarization state modulation.
Solaris Optics produces KDDP Pockels cells and Lithiumniobate Pockels cells.
Solaris Optics also produces Q-switches that consist of electro-optic crystal and driver, which are connected by attached electrodes. Applying an electric voltage to the crystal one can change its properties, which is observed in blocking and transmitting light propagating through the crystal. Products offered by Solaris Optics can be mounted in dedicated housing or ordered without mounts and housing.
Expanders
Solaris Optics manufactures different types of beam expanders designed for operation with high-energy pulse lasers which are used among others in LIDAR systems. Our systems work with different wavelengths including three harmonics of Nd:YAG laser. In order to obtain apochromatic correction without increasing complexity of the system, we use lenses made of extra low dispersion glasses. System is adjusted during assembling in order to minimize transmitted wavefront error and provide its proper operation.
SERVICES:
Research and Development (R&D)
Solaris’s Research and Development group is responsible for high-level optical engineering and is providing service for external customers, covering:
-
Design and modeling of optical elements and complex systems, including coatings and mechanics
-
Design and development of specific optical characterization techniques, whenever the subject is beyond standard capabilities of commercial measurement instrumentation
-
Technological and performance feasibility studies
-
Some current and recent examples include:
-
Development of Light-Weight Super-Teleobjective for ESA in frame of Polish Industry Incentive Scheme programme (leader)
-
Space Qualification of Optical Coatings for ESA in frame of Polish Industry Incentive Scheme programme (leader)
-
ESA’s PROBA 3, where Solaris delivers optical filters (contractor)
-
ESA’s Sentinel 5, to which Solaris delivers coated optical elements (including gradient filters) (contractor)
-
Thin Film Coating Services
Solaris Optics has coating department equipped with three coating chambers, one with plasma enhanced deposition. That gives possibility to build thin film coating projects up to about 100 layers. Solaris can produce Anti-Reflection coatings (AR), High-Reflection coatings (HR, mirrors), polarizing coatings, filter coatings, dedicated types of coatings like cut-off, bandpass etc.
The company’s coating specialists design and optimize all coatings in-house taking into account also coating chambers parameters.
Each design graph of transmission/reflection depends on the wavelengths that are sent and discussed before production process.
In each coating run additional samples are added to measure coating properties after process. Samples from all processes are controlled in spectrophotometer.
Please contact us for additional detail on these products and others