Abstract: Superconducting mirror surfaces are provided by forming a mirror surface from a material which is superconductive at a temperature above about 40.degree. K. and adjusting the temperature of the surface to that temperature at which the material is superconducting. The mirror surfaces are essentially perfect reflectors for electromagnetic radiation with photon energy less than the superconducting band gap.

Abstract: A digitally programmable waveform generator for generating completely arbitrary digital or analog waveforms from very low frequencies to frequencies in the gigasample per second range. A memory array with multiple parallel outputs is addressed; then the parallel output data is latched into buffer storage from which it is serially multiplexed out at a data rate many times faster than the access time of the memory array itself. While data is being multiplexed out serially, the memory array is accessed with the next required address and presents its data to the buffer storage before the serial multiplexing of the last group of data is completed, allowing this new data to then be latched into the buffer storage for smooth continuous serial data output. In a preferred implementation, a plurality of these serial data outputs are paralleled to form the input to a digital to analog converter, providing a programmable analog output.