Abstract
Intensive use of laser guide stars with the new generation of extremely large telescopes and hypertelescopes will require the use of more efficient lasers to surmount novel limitations and aberrations. The pulsed frequency-shifted feedback (FSF) laser we have developed overcomes the saturation of sodium atoms and solves the new problems. This work presents a highly efficient solution for operating pulsed FSF lasers. For the first time, an intracavity preamplifier achieves a gain of and more than per pulse, with a near-diffraction-limited beam and without amplified spontaneous emission. Endurance tests have shown that good performance is maintained over several hundred hours.
© 2011 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Jean-Paul Pique and Sébastien Farinotti
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 20(10) 2093-2101 (2003)
Hugues Guillet de Chatellus, Jean-Paul Pique, and Ioana Cristina Moldovan
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 25(2) 400-415 (2008)
Jérémie Thévenin, Marc Vallet, Marc Brunel, Hervé Gilles, and Sylvain Girard
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(5) 1104-1110 (2011)