Date of Award

Summer 7-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Optical Engineering

Department

Department of Physics and Optical Engineering

First Advisor

Robert Bunch

Second Advisor

Sergio Granieri

Third Advisor

Wonjong Joo

Abstract

Solid- and hollow-core light pipes are commonly employed to shape the intensity profile of high power lasers for applications in various technology industries such as the automobile, medical, and communications. There are several loss mechanisms present in solid-core glass and polymer light pipes, including absorption, bulk scattering in the material, surface scattering at the material-air interface, and Fresnel Loss at the material-air interface. Fresnel reflection and surface scattering losses typically dominate over other loss mechanisms in solid-core light pipes made of high quality optical materials. In order to analyze the losses in the light pipe, an approximate model is developed and tested using glass and polymer light pipes. The experiments in this thesis focus on analysis of the scattering loss in several optical light pipes configurations. From this analysis, the surface roughness parameters can be determined based on models and comparing with other measurements.

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