GBE10-A In Stock

The GBE10-A by ThorLabs is a premium-grade achromatic galilean beam expander that is designed to expand or reduce the diameter of a collimated beam by a factor of 10X. This state-of-the-art beam expander utilizes a low-aberration, achromatic design that is optimized to provide a wavefront error of less than λ/4, thereby ensuring that the expanded beam remains of the highest quality.

One of the key features of the GBE10-A is its ability to minimize the impact on the M² value of the expanded beam. This is particularly important as an expanded beam can be focused to a narrow diffraction-limited waist, which can be necessary for use with optics or instruments that have small input apertures. The GBE10-A uses an achromat and a lens that are fabricated from high-quality N-BK7 and N-BASF2 materials. To minimize reflections at the air-to-glass interface, the optics used in this beam expander have a 400 - 650 nm AR coating deposited on both sides of each lens incorporated into the design. This ensures that the maximum reflectance per surface is reduced to <0.5% over the coating range, compared to a typical reflectance of 4% per surface for an uncoated optic.

One of the standout features of the GBE10-A is its sliding lens design, which allows for the collimation to be adjusted while minimizing the beam walk-off effect that is inherent to lens adjustments. The red ring is used to adjust the output beam collimation, and once the desired collimation is obtained, the ring can be locked by tightening the locking screw using the included 0.05" hex key. The housing is designed so that it does not rotate when turning the collimation adjustment ring, which allows the user to adjust the divergence without disturbing any attached optics and maintain pointing stability.

The GBE10-A also features threaded input and output apertures, which allow additional lenses and filters to be installed easily along the optical axis of the beam expander. The input of each beam expander has internal SM05 (0.535"-40) and external SM1 (1.035"-40) threads for ease of use with compatible lens tubes and other optical components. Because of the GBE10-A’s 10X expansion, it has an externally M43 x 0.5-threaded output, which can be integrated with SM2 (2.035"-40) threaded components by using a SM2A30 adapter. The Ø1.2" section of the barrel provides a smooth mounting surface with the same diameter as compatible Ø1" lens tubes. The GBE10-A can be post mounted with compatible lens tube slip rings and lens tube clamps. Additionally, the GBE10-A can be integrated into a cage system using a compatible cage plate or with a mounting adapter in conjunction with a cage plate.