Phase conjugation in a high power regenerative laser amplifier system
We discuss the design and performance of a master oscillator/regenerative power amplifier laser system using a stimulated Brillouin scattering phase conjugator to control beam aberrations within the amplifier cavity. The master oscillator is a self-seeded Q-switched ND:YLF laser which provides up to 40mJ of single frequency light in a 10ns to 15ns pulse for amplification. The power amplifier uses a regenerative ring design with approximately 10 total passes and a phase conjugate mirror after the 5th pass. The conjugator is necessary to help produce a plane wavefront and thus a uniform intensity distribution within the ring, a requirement to avoid damage at the high intensities. The energy at the phase conjugate mirror exceeds 1J/pulse and thus careful attention is paid to the tradeoff between input energy, conjugator reflectivity and nearfield spatial fidelity of the return. The laser output is in the range of 20J/pulse, 2GW peak with average power of 70 W. Measurements have been made at high power of the nearfield and farfield beam quality.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 10141759
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-105458; CONF-9108238-1; ON: DE93009309
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: International summer school on nonlinear optical phase conjugation,Prague (Czech Republic),26-31 Aug 1991; Other Information: PBD: Jan 1992
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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High power, high beam quality regenerative amplifier
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