Abstract: A solid, thin sheet of an amalgam is formed by first mixing together a liquid metal and one or more powdered metals to form the amalgam in liquid form. The liquid amalgam is then spread out over a surface to form a thin layer of the liquid amalgam. The temperature of the thin layer of amalgam is then reduced to below the melting temperature of the liquid metal in the amalgam to form a solid sheet of the amalgam. The solid thin sheet of amalgam can then be removed from the surface. The solid thin sheet of amalgam can be stored at the lower temperature until it is desired to use the amalgam.

Abstract: Beam intensity controlling device includes an acoustooptic cell which receives an input light beam and produces an undiffracted or zero-order light beam and a diffracted beam in response to an RF signal at a predetermined frequency. An error signal is produced which is a function of the differences in the intensity of the zero-order beam from a desired level. This error signal is used to control the amplitude of the RF signal which in turn changes the intensity in the diffracted and zero-order beams such that the zero-order beam intensity is maintained relatively constant and can be provided as an input to a modulating device. The error signal has two components, a DC component which corrects for slow drift of the zero-order light beam intensity and an AC component which corrects for higher frequency changes in the zero-order light beam intensity.