Intracavity, adaptive correction of a high-average-power, solid-state, heat-capacity laser
The Solid-State, Heat-Capacity Laser (SSHCL) program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a multigeneration laser development effort scalable to the megawatt power levels. Wavefront quality is a driving metric of its performance. A deformable mirror with over 100 degrees of freedom situated within the cavity is used to correct both the static and dynamic aberrations sensed with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. The laser geometry is an unstable, confocal resonator with a clear aperture of 10 cm x 10 cm. It operates in a pulsed mode at a high repetition rate (up to 200 Hz) with a correction being applied before each pulse. Wavefront information is gathered in real-time from a low-power pick-off of the high-power beam. It is combined with historical trends of aberration growth to calculate a correction that is both feedback and feed-forward driven. The overall system design, measurement techniques and correction algorithms are discussed. Experimental results are presented.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 15016248
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-PROC-208886; TRN: US200512%%214
- Resource Relation:
- Journal Volume: 5708; Conference: Presented at: Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers Photonics West, San Jose, CA (US), 01/22/2005--01/27/2005; Other Information: PDF-FILE: 9 ; SIZE: 0.9 MBYTES; PBD: 5 Jan 2005
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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