FriiTriga, a triggered controller with an optical beam shutter using a hard disk drive voice-coil actuator.

We present in this article the complete setup to build a triggered controller with a mechanical optical shutter. The system is a low cost, Do-It-Yourself, and easy to implement setup with three functionalities: Manual mode, direct mode with TTL signal command and Triggered mode with a TTL signal command. Our setup is primarily intended to be integrated in optical setup where one needs to control the opening time of a light path, but can be used also for any other setup where one wants to send a TTL signal to command another subsystem (in our case the shutter is that subsystem).

Quantitative phase imaging applied to laser damage detection and analysis.

We investigate phase imaging as a measurement method for laser damage detection and analysis of laser-induced modification of optical materials. Experiments have been conducted with a wavefront sensor based on lateral shearing interferometry associated with a high-magnification optical microscope. The system has been used for the in-line observation of optical thin films and bulk samples, laser irradiated in two different conditions: 500 fs pulses at 343 and 1030 nm, and millisecond to second irradiation with a CO2 laser at 10.