A new control concept is proposed which can significantly enhance the performance ofthe Airborne Laser beam control. This control process allows high quality wavefrontinformation to be obtained even using extended sources of many theta-noughts in size.In simulation, a simple version increased… More

Optical Physics Company has developed a new wavefront control technique which has been shown on Phase I to enhance the on-axis irradiance of ABL systems by up to 3X. The worse the baseline ABL system performs, the more improvement is achieved by the newtechnique. The result is significantly… More

This SBIR Phase I project will investigate a novel optical control high energy laser (HEL) beam control architecture that has only six high power components between the HEL module and the target. The beamline is considerably simpler, smaller and lighter than what is possible with current… More

This SBIR Phase I project will investigate the utility of a proprietary rugged eye tracker design developed at Optical Physics Company (OPC) for the fighter jet pilot. Aggressive maneuvers of the jet result in both buffeting as well as substantial G loading. The OPC eye tracker remains immune to… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to investigate a novel tunable spectral sifting (TSS) filter design to enhance the capabilities of space sensors for the STSS and AIRSS programs. TSS filter design goals are tailored for these two space-based sensor acquisition programs, to select between… More

This SBIR Phase I project proposes to investigate a segmented deformable mirror (SDM) to minimize the thermal distortion in high energy laser (HEL) beam correction. The main innovation is to use a 1 cm thick segmented silicon facesheet elastically bonded into a monolithic substrate. The… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to investigate a novel interferometric star tracker design with end-of-life measurement error of 0.13 arcseconds at a spacecraft slew rate of 2 deg/sec. The interferometer design is inherently rad-hard and athermal, easily capable of operating in the… More

Optical Physics Company is proposing a three axis interferometer instrument which measures the one dimensional linear translation and the two-dimensional angular deflection in pitch and yaw of a 7 mm mirror 18-23 cm away. The design is simple and compact, fitting within a 5x5x7.5 cm volume. An… More

For applications like tactical laser weapons which involve imaging or transmitting energy via lasers over long paths near the ground, the cumulative atmospheric turbulence effects exceed what conventional adaptive optics technologies can handle. To compensate for moderate to severe deep turbulence… More

This SBIR Phase II project will manufacture and test under high power laser loading a full-scale DM matched to ABL requirements. This TRL 6 prototype will be 30 cm in diameter with 1.875 cm spaced actuators - identical to the current ABL DM. However, the new DM has 14 microns stroke compared to 8… More

Optical Physics Company is proposing to implement and demonstrate its novel tunable spectral sifting (TSS) filter design to enhance the capabilities of space sensors for the Space Tracking and Surveillance System Follow-On (STSS F/O) program. During the Phase I effort, a single stage of the TSS… More

A navigational sensor system that can maintain an accurate position estimate without relying upon systems such as GPS, Galileo or Glonass is needed for a variety of military applications. Optical Physics Company is proposing to investigate a novel passive optical approach to build a modern day… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) completed the Phase I investigation of the Interferometric Star Tracker technology. The feasibility to meet 0.11 arc-second (3 sigma) accuracy at 2 Hz with a 20x20 degree field of view has been demonstrated. Analysis and simulation studies confirm that the design… More

Optical Physics Company demonstrated the feasibility of a novel low complexity and low component count HEL Beam Control Architecture during the Phase I study. This SBIR Phase II project will demonstrate the full closed-loop operation of the BILL-Less control system, both in the lab and in… More

Optical Physics Company has developed two speckle imaging techniques to achieve diffraction-limited quality using subaperture data. Both have already been proven by the Air Force - one in the lab and the other in ground-to-space imaging. Each method uses a different process for recovering the… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) proposes to manufacture new silicon carbide (SiC) foam-based optics that are composite, athermal and lightweight (FOCAL) that provide an enabling capability for performing NASA space missions that will require 2 to 3 meter class cryogenic mirrors for large infrared… More

During the Phase I SBIR project Optical Physics Company (OPC) investigated a three axis interferometer instrument which measures the one dimensional linear translation and the two-dimensional angular deflection in pitch and yaw of a 7 mm mirror 18-23 cm away. Lab demonstrations both before and… More

The Air Force (AF) is interested in innovative, unique approaches for thermal management of HEL mirror subsystems which include active and passive methods for both web-based and foam-core lightweighted mirrors. Optical Physics Company (OPC) proposes to investigate three (3) active methods for… More

ABSTRACT: Optical Physics Company demonstrated the feasibility of Green''s Function Inversion (GFI) to accomplish high quality hit spot formation even under conditions of severe scintillation during the Phase I study. GFI provides many solutions with good strehl over a wide range of target area… More

A navigational sensor system that can maintain an accurate position estimate without relying upon systems such as GPS, Galileo or Glonass is needed for a variety of military applications. Optical Physics Company is proposing to develop a novel passive optical approach to build a modern day celestial… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) has been developing a sub-arcsecond accuracy rad-hard interferometric star tracker under AF SBIR sponsorship. Under this SBIR Phase I project, we will investigate options to miniaturize this device by more than an order of magnitude while maintaining the wide… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) has developed a technique called Green's Function Inversion (GFI) to compensate for moderate to severe deep turbulence effects encountered by tactical laser weapons. This technique can also be used to accurately measure the 3D turbulence profile in air-to-air and… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) has been a technology solution provider in free space laser communications for almost a decade. The proposed SBIR project will investigate two key innovations for a cost effective lasercom terminal architecture that meets or exceeds all requirements for pointing and… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to develop a conformal HEL architecture that provides a complete tactical HEL system for an airborne platform. The OPC solution addresses all of the shortfalls in the state of the art, providing complete solutions for subaperture phasing, pointing,… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is currently developing a remote HEL Irradiance Imaging Sensor (I2S) under a U.S. Army sponsored Directed Energy Test and Evaluation Capability (DETEC) contract. The proposed SBIR project presents a cost effective pathway to enhance the I2S bandwidth using dynamic… More

Atmospheric turbulence is too poorly modeled to predict the performance of a high energy laser (HEL) system in the field. Experiments conducted so far did not produce the needed three dimensional profiles to model phenomena such as turbulence anisotropy and inhomogeneity, variations of inner-scale… More

The Air Force (AF) is interested in innovative, unique approaches for thermal management of HEL mirror subsystems to minimize optical aberrations under HEL load. These include active and passive methods for both web-based and foam-core lightweighted mirrors. In the Phase I program Optical Physics… More

For applications like tactical laser weapons which involve imaging or transmitting energy via lasers over long paths near the ground, the cumulative atmospheric turbulence effects exceed what conventional adaptive optics technologies can handle. To compensate for moderate to severe deep turbulence… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to develop manufacture and test the prototype of a novel optical sensor based upon the OPC interferometric star tracker (iST). OPC comes into this project with a TRL 5 demonstration of the iST completed under an Air Force sponsored Phase II contract. A… More

Future Air Force platforms require electro-optic long range imaging systems conformal to the surface of the aircraft to minimize drag and maximize stealth. The long imaging range often means having to compensate for atmospheric turbulence as well as the boundary layer around the aircraft. … More

The proposed project is aimed at using concentrating solar power (CSP) technology for thermal electricity generation. The target market is small scale residential and commercial applications. These could be either rooftop, backyard or community-based systems that do not require a lot of land and… More

Optical Physics Company is proposing to implement an interferometric angle sensor for the purpose of determining the relative angle between the two diffracting crystals. Two approaches can be pursued, namely (1) the dual grating interferometer, and (2) the angle interferometer. The estimated cost of… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) has developed new silicon carbide (SiC) foam-based optics with hybrid skins that are composite, athermal and lightweight (FOCAL) that provide an enabling capability for performing NASA space missions that will require 2 to 3 meter class cryogenic mirrors for infrared… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to develop a new kind of Fresnel lens concentrator with built in tracking capability. The concentrator is tactically-mobile and can be stowed on a Light Tactical Trailer (LTT). It can also be set up and taken down in less than 30 minutes by two people… More

ABSTRACT: Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to customize a novel miniaturized interferometric star tracker (MiST) design for cubesats, leading to a new star tracker device C-MiST. All of the optics, the detector focal plane array and the processor for C-MiST will fit inside 100 cubic… More

Optical Physics Company is proposing to develop a space object imager based on three dimensional sheared coherent interferometric photography (3D SCIP). The approach provides a lightweight and scalable imaging system , immune to atmospheric turbulence and Doppler shifts of fast moving space… More

ABSTRACT: Optical Physics Company (OPC) in cooperation with Nutronics is proposing to combine two pioneering sets of optical phased array technologies developed independently at these two companies. The two technologies are OPC"s Holographic Beam Control (HBC) and Nutronics"Conformal… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to develop an innovative transmissive beam director which can meet the challenging size and performance requirements of the submarine platform. An ordinary beam director that fits into the volume specified would be limited to a 13-15 cm aperture. The… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to develop, manufacture, and test the TRL 5 prototype of a novel miniaturized interferometric star tracker (MiST). OPC comes into this project with a TRL 5 demonstration of the full size version of the interferometric star tracker (iST) design completed… More

ABSTRACT: Optical Physics Company (OPC) has been a technology solution provider in free space laser communications for almost a decade. The proposed SBIR project puts forth two key innovations for a cost effective lasercom terminal architecture that meets or exceeds all requirements for pointing… More

ABSTRACT: Detection and precision tracking of objects in space is critical to space situational awareness and response. This task is routinely carried out at night with ground-based electro-optical telescopes around the world. However, this capability needs to be extended to cover all times of… More

Unlike astronomical adaptive optics applications, the turbulence and thermal-blooming aberrations in typical ship and aircraft defense operations are often so strong that branchpoints form and conventional adaptive optics fails. New sensors, processing and deformable mirrors are needed, especially:… More

ABSTRACT: Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to design and build a flight ready miniature interferometric star tracker unit for cubesats (C-MiST). C-MiST will be a stand-alone device with its own processor, built in software and a space plug-and-play architecture (SPA) compliant… More

ABSTRACT: Optical Physics Company (OPC) demonstrated a technology opportunity for radiation hardened star trackers. In particular, OPC has been developing an interferometric star tracker (iST) concept under SBIR contracts funded by both the Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). One… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) designed a compact beam director for a submarine based high energy laser (HEL) during the first phase of this project. The OPC beam director achieves a 12 inch aperture having four times the brightness and twice the effective range of conventional beam director designs… More

Optical Physics Company (OPC) in cooperation with PM & AM Research is proposing to develop an adaptive optics system that will enable an ultra short pulse laser (USPL) illuminator to operate reliably and with high precision from an air platform at 6,000-20,000 foot altitude at up to 10 km range.… More