Photon drag monitors for beam monitoring in laser applications

In many applications it is necessary to have a reference beam of the laser light and for this purpose a beam splitter is usually used. The goal of this paper is to show the potentials of photon drag monitors to be used in place of the conventional beam splitters. Characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of the longitudinal and transverse devices are reported in this article. Recorded signal for typical silicon monitored by using a laser beam at wavelength 496 μm (CH3F laser) is presented here. Variation of the noise equivalent power as a function of the radiation wavelength is also given for different monitor resistivity. The reported photon drag monitor can be used as an on-linedevice for monitoring reference pulses in variety of signal processing and pulse shaping in laser applications