The present invention is an improvement to the monoblock laser described and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,556,614, entitled, Monolithic Solid State LASER Assembly and Method of Manufacture, issued Apr. 29, 2003. This patent is incorporated herein by reference with only the necessary parts being duplicated in this specification.
The invention described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,556,614, is a photon pumped laser cavity assembly consisting of a pair of coaxial rods made from laser gain material with precisely cut side-faces and end-faces. Some of the end-faces are covered by at least one of a dielectric or metal coating highly reflective to the laser output beam, a wafer of polarizing material, and a dielectric or metal coating partially reflective to the laser beam. More details of this prior art will be described in the Detailed Description of the Invention
Laser range finders are becoming an increasingly vital component in high precision targeting engagements. The precise and accurate range to target information is an essential variable to the fire control equation of most weapon systems. Unfortunately, current fielded laser range finders are bulky, heavy and expensive. These laser range finders were not developed with the idea that would be carried by forces.
The monoblock laser described in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,556,614 makes the development/fabrication of a very low cost, compact laser range finder feasible. Unfortunately, the beam divergence of the monoblock laser is rather larger (>8 mRad)(low brightness laser) which means a sizable optic is required to collimate the monoblock laser output.
Accordingly, there is in a need in the prior to make monoblock lasers brighter by decreasing the beam divergence of the laser. The present invention addresses this need.