Self-seeding high power laser

摘要

A self-seeding high power laser includes a spatial filter; an optical relay for circulating a low power un-distorted optical beam, an adaptive optic optically coupled to the output of the optical relay; a high power amplifier optically coupled to an output of the adaptive optic phase control element, wherein adaptively modified phasefront injected by the adaptive optic cancels distortions produced by the high power amplifier; a beamsplitter optically coupled to the high power amplifier for splitting the high power un-distorted optical beam into a high power output beam as the output of the self-seeding high power laser, and a low power beam; a focusing lens; a detector for detecting a metric of the low power beam; and a controller for adaptively controlling the adaptive optic to maximize the power of the high power amplifier, based on the detected metric.

主权项

1. A self-seeding high power laser comprising:
a spatial filter; an optical relay for circulating a low power un-distorted optical beam from the spatial filter, an adaptive optic optically coupled to an output of the optical relay for adaptively modifying a phasefront of the low power un-distorted optical beam; a high power amplifier optically coupled to an output of the adaptive optic phase control element for generating a high power un-distorted optical beam, wherein the adaptively modified phasefront injected by the adaptive optic cancels distortions produced by the high power amplifier to generate said high power un-distorted optical beam; a beamsplitter optically coupled to the high power amplifier for splitting the high power un-distorted optical beam into a high power output beam as the output of the self-seeding high power laser, and the low power beam; a focusing lens for focusing the low power beam into the spatial filter; a detector for detecting a metric of the low power beam filtered by the spatial filter; and a controller for inputting the detected metric and, based on the detected metric, adaptively controlling the adaptive optic to maximize the power of the high power amplifier.