Access MZA’s latest books, reference resources, external press coverage, and technical publications in high-energy laser systems and wave-optics modeling.
Co-authored by MZA's Dr. Matthew Whiteley, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of aero-optical turbulence, air-buffeting jitter, and measurement techniques, while detailing flow control and adaptive optics strategies to mitigate beam degradation on airborne laser platforms.
Authored by MZA's Dr. Jason Schmidt, this book is a practical guide to FT-based analysis, imaging systems, and wave-optics simulations. Features chapter problem sets and downloadable MATLAB® code examples.
This document covers how atmospheric turbulence, scattering, and absorption degrade optical systems (like lasers and imaging), and provides the core formulas to measure and correct those distortions.
Covers how aerodynamic flow fields (aero-optics) and mechanical vibrations (aero-mechanics) degrade airborne laser projection.
Examines fundamental physical phenomena and environmental factors that limit directed energy laser system performance.
The Air Force Research Laboratory completed flight testing of the Hybrid Aero-Effect Reducing Design with Realistic Optical Components (HARDROC) beam director developed in partnership with MZA Associates.
AEDC contracted with MZA Associates Corporation through the SBIR and CRP programs to develop a system that can accurately obtain wavefront information anywhere around aircraft models in transonic and supersonic wind tunnels.
Media coverage detailing the Office of Naval Research contract awarded to MZA for compact counter-UAS laser weapon development.
An in-depth report on MZA's contract to design, integrate, and demonstrate a low-cost, compact C-UAS High Energy Laser Weapon System.
The Air Force Research Laboratory completed flight testing of the Airborne High Energy Laser (AHEL) beam director developed in partnership with MZA Associates.
Defense equipment report highlighting the US Department of Defense contract notice featuring the MZA Othela beam director.
A recurrent neural network approach for processing event camera data streams to improve slope estimation accuracy and wavefront reconstruction in adaptive optics.
Proposes a modularized pipeline combining convolutional neural network feature extraction with state-space models for localized UAV detection and trajectory tracking.
Ph.D. dissertation detailing event-based algorithm development, neural network architectures for Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing, and coded aperture system feasibility.
This paper presents a three-part modular algorithm that uses advanced computer vision techniques to detect and track unauthorized drones.
Demonstrates a low-complexity recurrent neural network applied to event streams for sub-half-pixel spot displacement tracking in Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors.
Explores machine learning pipelines adapted for numerical weather prediction data to forecast spatial and temporal atmospheric turbulence behavior.
Describes ProfilerTools, a MATLAB-based software suite developed by MZA Associates for testing and evaluating wavefront sensor data and performing atmospheric profiling.
Investigates atmospheric turbulence trends and environmental drivers across diurnal and nocturnal cycles for enhanced system modeling.
Analyzes optical turbulence and correlated weather measurements collected along the path of totality during the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse.
Presents subpixel accuracy tracking methods applied across multi-modal RGB intensity and depth sensor feeds for improved target localization.
Real-time event-based CNN providing sub-pixel spot-tracking accuracy for Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors at 800+ Hz.
Analytical method for evaluating partially coherent beams in turbulence by reformulating beam moment calculations into free-space propagation models.
presents a deep learning framework using recurrent neural networks to forecast near-term daytime atmospheric optical turbulence from prior meteorological measurements.
Explores spatial filtering techniques in off-axis digital holography to perform optical edge enhancement on 2-D and 3-D reconstructed objects.
Semi-analytic split-step simulation method for two-screen atmospheric turbulence, offering relaxed sampling constraints, flexible computational grids, and faster multi-frame processing.
Multi-plane sharpness metric maximization enables 3D digital holography image reconstruction through distributed-volume turbulence.
Analytical model for predicting atmospheric laser filamentation onset and channel radius, validated against simulation data and 1.5-micron field experiments.
A series of flight experiments have demonstrated a novel approach to measuring path-resolved optical turbulence strength along an 8 km air-to-ground slant path.