A gated spectrometer has been designed for real-time, pulsed infrared (IR) studies at the National Synchrotron Light
Source at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. A pair of 90-degree, off-axis parabolic mirrors are used to relay the light
from an entrance slit to an output IR recording camera. With an initial wavelength range of 1500-4500 nm required,
gratings could not be used in the spectrometer because grating orders would overlap. A magnesium oxide prism, placed
between these parabolic mirrors, serves as the dispersion element. The spectrometer is doubly telecentric. With proper
choice of the air spacing between the prism and the second parabolic mirror, any spectral region of interest within the
InSb camera array's sensitivity region can be recorded. The wavelengths leaving the second parabolic mirror are
collimated, thereby relaxing the camera positioning tolerance. To set up the instrument, two different wavelength
(visible) lasers are introduced at the entrance slit and made collinear with the optical axis via flip mirrors. After
dispersion by the prism, these two laser beams are directed to tick marks located on the outside housing of the gated IR
camera. This provides first-order wavelength calibration for the instrument. Light that is reflected off the front prism
face is coupled into a high-speed detector to verify steady radiance during the gated spectral imaging. Alignment
features include tick marks on the prism and parabolic mirrors. This instrument was designed to complement singlepoint
pyrometry, which provides continuous time histories of a small collection of spots from shock-heated targets.
Thermal imaging is an important, though challenging, diagnostic for shockwave experiments. Shock-compressed materials undergo transient temperature changes that cannot be recorded with standard (greater than ms response time) infrared detectors. A further complication arises when optical elements near the experiment are destroyed. We have designed a thermal-imaging system for studying shock temperatures produced inside a gas gun at Sandia National Laboratories. Inexpensive, diamond-turned, parabolic mirrors relay an image of the shocked target to the exterior of the gas gun chamber through a sapphire vacuum port. The 3000-5000-nm portion of this image is directed to an infrared camera which acquires a snapshot of the target with a minimum exposure time of 150 ns. A special mask is inserted at the last intermediate image plane, to provide dynamic thermal background recording during the event. Other wavelength bands of this image are split into high-speed detectors operating at 900-1700 nm and at 1700-3000 nm, for time-resolved pyrometry measurements. This system incorporates 90-degree, off-axis parabolic mirrors, which can collect low f/# light over a broad spectral range, for high-speed imaging. Matched mirror pairs must be used so that aberrations cancel. To eliminate image plane tilt, proper tip-to-tip orientation of the parabolic mirrors is required. If one parabolic mirror is rotated 180 degrees about the optical axis connecting the pair of parabolic mirrors, the resulting image is tilted by 60 degrees. Different focal-length mirrors cannot be used to magnify the image without substantially sacrificing image quality. This paper analyzes performance and aberrations of this imaging diagnostic.
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