Design and operation of a 150 W near diffraction-limited laser amplifier with SBS wavefront correction

Author

Dane, C.B. ; Zapata, L.E. ; Neuman, W.A. ; Norton, M.A. ; Hackel, L.A.

Author_Institution

Lawrence Livermore Nat. Lab., CA, USA

Volume

31

Issue

1

fYear

1995

fDate

1/1/1995 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

148

Lastpage

163

Abstract

The design and operation of a Nd:glass regenerative amplifier using a stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) phase conjugate mirror is presented. The system can be operated at 25-30 J per pulse with a pulse width of 14 ns and a pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 6 Hz. This results in an average output power of >150 W with a peak power of 2 GW. The experimentally measured divergence of the amplifier output is 1.25× the diffraction limit and it can be frequency doubled with >80% efficiency. The detailed considerations required for this specific amplifier design are discussed as well as how these considerations apply to the design of high average power, high beam quality laser systems in general

Keywords

aberrations; laser mirrors; neodymium; nonlinear optics; optical design techniques; optical harmonic generation; optical phase conjugation; solid lasers; stimulated Brillouin scattering; 14 ns; 150 W; 2 GW; 25 to 30 J; 80 percent; Nd:glass regenerative amplifier; SBS; SBS wavefront correction; amplifier design; amplifier output; average output power; diffraction limit; frequency doubled; high average power; high beam quality laser systems; near diffraction-limited laser amplifier; peak power; phase conjugate mirror; pulse repetition frequency; pulse width; stimulated Brillouin scattering; Brillouin scattering; Diffraction; Frequency; Mirrors; Operational amplifiers; Optical design; Power amplifiers; Pulse amplifiers; Pulse measurements; Space vector pulse width modulation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/3.341719

Filename

341719