Note: Fast, small, and low vibration mechanical laser shutters

Abstract

We present three novel mechanical laser shutter designs based, respectively, on a stepper motor, a relay, and a piezoelectric actuator. Each shutter type is ideally suited to a specific shuttering application. The stepper motor is well suited for applications requiring low vibrations, the relay is compact and capable of rapid bursts, and the piezoelectric is 2 orders of magnitude faster than other available mechanical shutters.

Attosecond timing of the dynamical Franz–Keldysh effect

“…After passing through the 50-nm-thick diamond pellicles, the SAP spectrum is measured by an XUV spectrometer placed at the end of the beamline. A home-made shutter [29] operating at 40 Hz is mounted in the IR beam path in order to enable sequential acquisition of transmitted spectra with and without presence of the pump. This strongly increases the signal to noise ratio and allows us to evaluate the pump-induced changes in the diamond absorbance defined as follows:…”

A universal driver for vibration free operation of mechanical shutters

“…Martínez et al in Ref. [5] show comparison of the performances of many different shutters. These shutters have advantages or disadvantages due to their size, speed of operation, vibration and acoustic noise.…”

“…Commercially available mechanical shutters are generally expensive. So experimentalists generally build their own low cost shutters by modifying piezoelectric transducers [1], voice coil of a loudspeaker [2], electromagnetic relay [3], voice coil actuator of a HDD [4] and stepper motor [5]. Martínez et al in Ref.…”

Dual atomic interferometer with a tunable point of minimum magnetic sensitivity

“…The optical pumping process puts more than 94% of the atoms in the desired state. We block the beams with mechanical shutters to ensure that there is no scattered light during the interferometric sequence [42].…”