A Novel Intra-Cavity Adaptive Optical System for High Power Solid-State Lasers

Thermally induced optically-distortion effects are one of the main impediments to be overcome in developing high power solid-state lasers. To compensate the dynamic aberration of laser beam, an intra-cavity adaptive optical system was developed. A beaconing light was introduced to measure the wavefront aberration of intracavity laser beam and an MEMS deformable mirror was used to improve the wavefront aberration and output power of the laser . A genetic algorithm was used to adjust the control voltages of 37 independent electrodes to vary the shape of the deformable mirror surface such that the aberration of laser beam can be compensated .The experimental result showed that the output power was increased nearly 3 times and the beam quality was improved obviously by closed loop automatic control of the adaptive optical system.