Adaptive control of laser beams propagating in the atmosphere

Abstract

In the present paper efficiency of adaptive correction is analyzed in the turbulent atmosphere and under the conditions of thermal blooming. A numerical model of a typical adaptive optics system was developed to carry out the investigations. As it is known, phase conjugation and multidither, i.e., the algorithms commonly employed to correct for thermal and turbulent distortions of laser beams are unstable in nonlinear medium. We demonstrated that stability of phase control is possible to increase introducing the modifications of the algorithms. Also we demonstrated that phase compensation does not insure complete correction for thermal or turbulent aberrations induced by an atmospheric layer. To correct for aberrations under these conditions it is possible to employ amplitude-phase control over the beam, for example, to use the wavefront reversal algorithm. Realization of the algorithm is possible in a two-mirror adaptive system in which the control over beam phase is performed in two planes at the access to the medium. In numerical experiments it was shown that the two-mirror system insures the absolute compensation for a thin turbulent layer placed at arbitrary distance from the aperture of a laser source and high effectiveness of compensation for distributed lens comparing with phase-only algorithms.