New Focus

Products

A good supplier of optical components, specializing in electro-optical elements.

Neutral Density Filters: These are reflective (else noted) and will display etalon effects. Melles Griot has nice absorptive neutral density filters that are largely insensitive to incidence angle (unlike horrible etalon-ing reflective filters). They come in a fancy wooden box with calibration curves for each filter. Highly recommended.
Dielectric Mirrors: They're fine for general purpose mirrors.
Polarizing Beam Cubes: They're fine. For better extinction ratios (and better polarizers, in general), look to Karl Lambrecht Corp..

Vortex: A wonderful laser that allows all kinds of worry-free fun. Hop-free piezo tuning > 10 GHz at 780nm. Older models > 15mW, newer < 10mW. Current input via the controller, but also via direct tap for high-frequency modulation. In general, totally rock-solid.
Velocity: Basically a mode-hop-free laser with a tuning range of at least tens of nm (over 50 nm for some versions). Different lasers are available for wavelengths between ~600 nm to 2000 nm. The laser implements a piezo stack to allow fine scanning (below 0.01 pm resolution). However, both the DC motor scan and piezo scan are not nearly as well-constructed as they could be
Vidia: An absolutely beautiful laser. No piezo scan though, so the resolution limit is 1 pm.

General Purpose Detectors: These housed dectectors are decent, and perform comparably to a simple photodetection circuit based on the basic transimpedance amplifier topology.
- 125 MHz Receiver
Balanced Detectors: These employ the "cascode" auto-balancing topology which may be found in Hobbs.
GHz Detectors: ?? -- I wouldn't try making these in the lab.

EOMs: Very expensive, but they come in a shiny box. You may want to build your own.
High-Voltage Amplifier: Expensive and noisy, though robust -- build your own.