Abstract
Most of the technical challenges encountered in scaling flashlamp-pumped solid-state lasers to high-average-output power arise from the thermal load. Cooling the surface of the solid-state laser medium generates internal temperature gradients which lead to wave front distortions, depolarization, and, if pumping or cooling is nonuniform, beam steering. A variety of solutions to these problems have been proposed, and several are presently undergoing vigorous development. An approach offering great potential involves optical phase conjugation. The initial report1 of phase conjugation via stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) showed that aberrations in a laser beam could be eliminated by reflecting the beam off a SBS cell and passing the beam back through the source of the aberrations. This double-pass phase-conjugate configuration was quickly used to demonstrate2 compensation for phase distortions in an active ruby amplifier, thereby indicating an approach whereby nearly diffraction-limited performance could be achieved with a laser oscillator/amplifier configuration: phase conjugation successfully maintains the high-oscillator beam quality, while the pulse energy is increased by two passes through the amplifier.
© 1986 Optical Society of America
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