Adaptive laser resonators

Beam quality and output power of high-power solid state lasers were frequently limited by aberrations of the active medium. If a resonators were set up such that it forces the laser to operate in the TEM/sub 00/ fundamental transverse mode, aberrations cause high diffraction losses. This in turn lea...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wittrock, U., Buske, I., Heuck, H.-M.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptive optics
Adaptive systems
Control systems
Laser beams
Laser modes
Optical diffraction
Optical losses
Optical resonators
Power generation
Solid lasers
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Summary:Beam quality and output power of high-power solid state lasers were frequently limited by aberrations of the active medium. If a resonators were set up such that it forces the laser to operate in the TEM/sub 00/ fundamental transverse mode, aberrations cause high diffraction losses. This in turn leads to a strong reduction of the output power. In this paper, optical layout of master-oscillator-power-amplifier (MOPA) systems with adaptive aberration compensation was discussed. The genetic control algorithm was employed to control the deformable mirror and experimental results for the MOPA system was presented. For both systems commercial lamp-pumped Nd:YAG laser heads that can provide about 500 W of output power when used in a multimode resonator was used.