Development of piezoelectric optical phase modulator by low driving voltage for monitoring high energy charge in space

摘要

Electro-optic Pockels effect is going to be planed for monitoring the irradiation of high energy electric charge in space. It is necessary an optical phase modulator technique to measure with high sensitivity the phase retardation caused by accumulated space charge in LiNbO{sub}3 Pockels crystal. In the birefringence measurement system, we have developed, it needs a high voltage (500V/0.5rad) power supply to drive the optical phase modulator. The high voltage such as 500V can not use to operating phase modulator because an electrical discharge occurs in spacecraft. In this paper a new photo-elastic phase modulator drove by a multi-layers piezo-electric transducer have developed that can be driven by a low voltage (5V/0.5rad).