Abstract

A novel scheme to correct aberration of each beam from the front-end to the target point in a thermal inertia laser (TIL) is presented. Each beam contains a deformable mirror (DM) with an aperture of $70\mathrm{mm}\times 70\mathrm{mm}$ at the injection of the main amplifier and a Hartman–Shack (HS) sensor in a parameter diagnostic unit (PDU). A temporary HS sensor for measuring the static aberration of each beam with $1\mathrm{Hz}$ source is placed at the target point. The sensor will be removed from the target point during the main single shot, so we transfer the results measured at the target point to the sensors in the PDU. Dynamic aberration can also be measured by the HS sensor in the PDU during the single shot. In this way, we need not calibrate the aberration of the PDU, and aberration of each beam can be corrected by the DM with the HS sensor in the PDU. We demonstrate that with this scheme the divergence angle of the TIL pulses can be improved from 100 to less than $60\mathrm{\mu rad}$ with a focal length of $2200\mathrm{mm}$ and beam size of $290\mathrm{mm}\times 290\mathrm{mm}$, which meets the requirement of a TIL.

© 2009 Optical Society of America

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