Recent progress of adaptive beam cleanup of solid-state slab lasers in Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The beam qualities of high power solid-state slab lasers are severely limited by many factors such as thermal effects of the gain medium. Simultaneously achieving high beam quality and high average power remains a fundamental problem in the development of high power lasers. Adaptive optics systems are able to significantly improve beam qualities by compensating for the static and dynamic phase distortions of the laser beams. In recent years, Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed low-order aberration compensators, weighted least-square wavefront reconstruction algorithms, and generic real-time wavefront processors for solid-state slab lasers. Based on these key components, over two dozens of adaptive optics systems are delivered to a variety of solid-state slab laser systems in China for beam cleanup. With effective operations of these adaptive optics systems, the beam qualities of the laser systems have all been well improved.