Stress Engineered Optics: Optomechanical Design and Performance

Stress-engineered optics (SEOs) are optical elements in which external forces are applied to produce spatially-varying retardance for polarization control in optical systems. We present and test an SEO housing design that has quantifiable system parameters that would allow us to create a specified value of the dimensionless stress parameter, c, in the SEO. We include two older SEO designs for completeness: (1) thermal compression and (2) set screws with a copper sleeve. We discuss two newly developed SEO designs: (3) cone-through-cylinder and (4) hydraulic pressure. The hydraulic pressure design has well-defined and quantifiable system parameters with the ability to measure input pressure on the optical window, producing a maximum stress parameter of 7.16 pi. The hydraulic pressure design has the potential to be a new test method for measuring stress optic coefficient of materials and its wavelength dependence.