Optical Surfaces reports how its high precision reference flat mirrors are enabling testing and precise alignment of Earth observation satellite telescopes.

Optical Surfaces has been selected by the Gérard Mourou Centre for fast Optical Science (CUOS) at the University of Michigan (US) to provide beam expander optics for its Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System (ZEUS).

Optical Surfaces is an established manufacturer and supplier of large-area windows of optical quality for military sensing applications.

Optical Surfaces is a supplier of off-axis parabolic and flat mirrors, the key optical elements in Infrared (IR) collimators commonly used for evaluating the performance of thermal imaging systems.

Optical Surfaces has supplied a high precision beamsplitter that lies at the heart of a Michelson type interferometer for testing of optical components used in military applications.

Optical Surfaces Ltd. reports on a technological development that has allowed them to produce a novel athermalised beam collimator design that delivers stable high performance across a wide temperature range.  

Optical Surfaces has reported how it is machining and polishing high precision Fibre Optic Channel Plates (FOCP) for an X-ray shielding application. Fibre Optic Channel Plates are widely used as optical devices to replace optical lenses because they require no focusing distance making them a suited component when creating a compact optical device.

Optical Surfaces has reported on growing demand for larger (350 - 600mm clear aperture) diameters. Working with materials including ClearCeram, Fused Quartz and Zerodur in their thermally stable manufacturing environment - Optical Surfaces has routinely achieved a surface accuracy of up to lambda/20 peak-to-valley and surface roughness of 10 Å rms on reference flats up to 650mm in diameter.

Optical Surfaces has been selected by the Optical Engineering Group at the University of Warwick (UK) School of Engineering to supply key focusing optics to enable accurate 3D flight tracking and analysis of mosquito flight behaviour.

Specialist high precision optics manufacturer, Optical Surfaces has reported that despite the pressures of the global pandemic they managed to increase orders by 28% during 2020.

Optical Surfaces has received an order to supply the University of Oxford with three speciality glass prisms for cryogenic measurements for a study that will enable defining key components in the HARMONI spectrometer being developed for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

Optical Surfaces, a specialist producer of high performance coated, durable mirrors, up to 600mm in diameter, for use with high power femtosecond lasers, has employed the latest dielectric coating technology. These high-power laser mirrors provide minimum pulse distortion and the maximum usable bandwidth.

Optical Surfaces has produced large diameter, high precision windows for wind tunnel aerodynamic testing. Aerodynamicists and engineers use wind tunnels to test models of proposed aircraft and engine components. During a test, the model is placed in the test section of the tunnel and air is made to flow past the model.

Optical Surfaces has reported that its off-axis parabolic mirrors are particularly suitable for coating using an Ion Beam Sputtering (IBS) technique that provides near 100% reflectivity thereby providing high protection from thermal damage that often arises from high power continuous wave lasers.

Optical Surfaces has reported delivery to the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) of high precision disperser prisms and folding mirror components that lie at the heart of the SPIRou / SPIP near infrared spectrograph.

Off-axis parabolic mirrors are the most common type of aspherical mirrors used in optical instruments because they are free from spherical aberrations, and can focus a parallel beam to a point or point source to infinity.

Using specialist production techniques, and benefiting from a stable manufacturing environment, Optical Surfaces’ experienced and skilled engineering team are known for producing ultra-smooth mirrors with surface accuracy, surface quality and surface slope errors.

Optical Surfaces offers a range of high precision mounts developed to support off-axis paraboloids, spheres and optical flats up to 600mm diameter in applications where stability is important. Constructed in black anodized aluminium – four models of OS Mounts provide a secure and stable platform for mirror diameters from 100 to 254mm.

Optical Surfaces has reported how a motorised UV-Vis-NIR collimator and interferometric alignment system it supplied to the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) in Berlin, Germany has been used to set-up the ground breaking DLR Earth Sensing Imaging Spectrometer (DESIS).

Optical Surfaces is an international manufacturer of Off-Axis Parabolic Mirrors (OAPs) for demanding imaging applications. Off-axis parabolic mirrors can be a useful tool in optical design. OAPs combine the achromatic and diffraction limited imaging properties of a parabolic mirror with the ability to deviate the light path off-axis, which is useful for most imaging systems.