Arun K. Majumdar Ph.D., is Director of Research at LCResearch, Inc. in California. He has more than 23 years of experience from Industry, University and National Laboratory settings in the areas of atmospheric turbulence effects on laser propagation, imaging and communications. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine.Jennifer C. Ricklin received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. She has been with the Army Research Laboratory since 1983. Since that time her research interests have included a number of topical applications of laser beam propagation in the atmosphere. She is now a Program Manager at DARPA / ATO.

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Ball lenses are highly transparent spheres made of optical glasses. They are used to focus light into fibers as in diode laser-to-fiber coupling as well as fiber-to-fiber coupling. They have high coupling efficiency and should be much easier to align than traditional lenses due to their physical shape. Uni Optics offers a variety of Ball Lenses in a range of substrates for performance in the ultraviolet to the NIR.

Material Grade A optical glass or Fused Silica Tolerance(mm) ±0.05 Size ¢ (mm) 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 8.0, 10.0 Wavelength range(nm) 350-2200nm Coating Uncoated Sphericity (μm): ±0.625

Ball Lenses are commonly used to improve signal quality in fiber coupling applications, or for use in endoscopy, bar code scanning and sensor applications. Ball Lenses feature short back focal lengths to minimize the distance needed from the Ball Lens to the optical fiber.