Improving focusability of post-compressed PW laser pulses using a deformable mirror
A. A. Soloviev, A. V. Kotov, Mikhail Martyanov, S. E. Perevalov, R. S. Zemskov, M. Starodubtsev, Alexander Alexandrov, Ilya Galaktionov, Vadim Samarkin, Alexis Kudryashov, Ivan Yakovlev, Vladislav Ginzburg, Аnton Kochetkov, Ilya Shaikin, Alexey Kuzmin, S. E. Stukachev, Sergey Mironov, A. A. Shaykin, Е. А. Хазанов
Abstract
The use of the post-compression technique ensures gain in laser pulse peak power but at the same time degrades beam focusability due to the nonlinear wavefront distortions caused by a spatially nonuniform beam profile. In this paper a substantial focusability improvement of a post-compressed laser pulse by means of adaptive optics was demonstrated experimentally. The Strehl ratio increase from 0.16 to 0.43 was measured. Simulations showed that the peak intensity in this case reaches 0.52 of the theoretical limit.