Performance analysis of adaptive fiber laser array propagating in atmosphere with correction of high order aberrations in sub-aperture

Abstract

Recently developed adaptive fiber laser array technique provides a promising way incorporating aberrations correction with laser beams transmission. Existing researches are focused on sub-aperture low order aberrations (pistons and tips/tilts) compensation and got excellent correction results for weak and moderate turbulence in short range. While such results are not adequate for future laser applications which face longer range and stronger turbulence. So sub-aperture high aberrations compensation is necessary. Relationship between corrigible orders of sub-aperture aberrations and far-field metrics as power-in-the-bucket (PIB) and Strehl ratio is investigated with numeric simulation in this paper. Numerical investigation results shows that increment in array number won’t result in effective improvement of the far-field metric if sub-aperture size is fixed. Low order aberrations compensation in sub-apertures gets its best performances only when turbulence strength is weak. Pistons compensation becomes invalid and higher order aberrations compensation is necessary when turbulence gets strong enough. Cost functions of the adaptive fiber laser array with high order aberrations correction in sub-apertures are defined and the optimum corrigible orders are discussed. Results shows that high order (less than first ten Zernike orders) compensation is acceptable where balance between increment of the far-field metric and the cost and complexity of the system could be reached.