A high average power cryogenically-cooled diode-pumped solid-state laser system for Hilase centre in Czech Republic is being developed by Central Laser Facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, England in collaboration with Hilase team. The system will deliver pulses with energy of 100 J at 10 Hz repetition rate and will find applications in research and industry. The laser medium and other elements of the system are subject to heavy thermal loading which causes serious optical aberrations and degrade the output beam quality. To meet the stringent laser requirements of this kWclass laser, it is necessary to implement adaptive optics system, which will correct for these aberrations. During our research the sources of aberrations have been identified and analyzed. Based on this analysis, a suitable adaptive optics system was proposed. After finalizing numerical models, simulations and optimizations, the adaptive optics system was developed, characterized and installed in a cryogenically-cooled multi-slab laser system running up to 6 J and 10 Hz. The adaptive optics system consists of 6x6 actuator bimorph deformable mirror and wavefront sensor based on quadriwave lateral shearing interferometry operated in closed loop. The functionality of the system was demonstrated at full power.

Date Published: 3 March 2015
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 9343, Laser Resonators, Microresonators, and Beam Control XVII, 93431N (3 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2079794

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9343:
Laser Resonators, Microresonators, and Beam Control XVII
Alexis V. Kudryashov; Alan H. Paxton; Vladimir S. Ilchenko; Lutz Aschke; Kunihiko Washio, Editor(s)