Stanford Photo-Thermal Solutions

Stanford Photo-Thermal Solutions (SPTS) was founded in November 2002 to build a business in the field of optical equipment R&D, manufacturing of novel optical systems and consulting in various issues associated with optical materials. Photo-thermal Common-path Interferometer (PCI) technology is in the focus of our current activity. The technology was developed in 1997-2000 at the Ginzton Lab at Stanford University.

Our first apparatus was designed in the 1997-98 timeframe. It belongs to a class of pump/probe thermal lens instruments which are used to detect the very weak phase distortions of a probe beam which are introduced in a material under test by the absorption of a pump laser. The original motivation for the instrument was to study induced absorption effects and optical damage in nonlinear optical crystals. The use of two lasers, one laser to introduce the absorption, and the second laser to monitor this absorption is the key element of our original design.