Application Cases

Experiment Name: Beam Pointing Correction Experiment for High-Power Solid-State Slab Lasers

Test Equipment: High-voltage amplifier, wavefront sensor, high-power slab laser, image acquisition card, far-field camera, reflective mirror, deformable mirror, etc.

Experimental Procedure:

Figure 1: Experimental System for Beam Pointing Stabilization in High-Power Solid-State Slab Lasers

Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the experimental system. The beam emitted by a high-power slab laser is used as the correction target. The experimental setup includes a 255-element deformable mirror for correcting aberrations and a tip-tilt mirror with an effective clear aperture of 120 mm × 120 mm for correcting beam tilt. Additionally, a far-field camera is incorporated to detect beam pointing, with a pixel size of 5.6 µm.

Experimental Results:

Figure 2: Far-Field Before Correction; (a) Far-Field Spot, (b) Profile

Figure 2 shows the far-field spot of the beam at a certain moment before correction. Before correction, the peak intensity and energy concentration of the far-field spot were relatively low. After correction, the peak intensity significantly increased, and the beam quality improved from β = 11.02 to β = 2.32. The corrected far-field is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Far-Field After Correction; (a) Far-Field Spot, (b) Profile

In the experiment, the beam emitted by the high-power solid-state slab laser was detected and corrected using three methods: the average slope method based on a Hartmann wavefront sensor, the average slope method with edge sub-apertures removed, and the detection method based on far-field spots. Figure 4 shows the scatter plots of the corrected results using these three methods. The results indicate that the average slope method with edge sub-apertures removed improves the correction effectiveness compared to the standard average slope method, with smaller RMS and PV values for beam jitter.

Figure 4: Beam Pointing Correction Results Using Three Methods; (a) Average Slope Method, (b) Average Slope Method with Edge Sub-Apertures Removed, (c) Far-Field Detection Method, (d) Comparison Chart

Figure 5: Frequency Domain Analysis of Beam Jitter After Correction
Figure 5 shows the frequency domain analysis of beam jitter after correction. The green curve represents the frequency domain curve of beam jitter after correction using the average slope method based on the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. The blue curve shows the results of the average slope method with edge sub-apertures removed, and the red curve shows the results of far-field correction. Figure (a) shows the correction results in the X-direction, and Figure (b) shows the correction results in the Y-direction. In Figure (a), comparing the green and blue curves with the red curve reveals that the average slope method introduces more low-frequency and high-frequency components. The average slope method with edge sub-apertures removed reduces these low-frequency components, bringing the results closer to those of far-field detection, and also reduces high-frequency components. The experiment validates the effectiveness of excluding edge sub-apertures in the average slope method for stabilizing the beam pointing of high-power slab lasers.

Figure 5: Frequency Domain Curves of Beam Jitter After Correction; (a) X-Direction, (b) Y-Direction

High-Voltage Amplifier Recommendation: ATA-7010

Figure: ATA-7010 High-Voltage Amplifier Specifications

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