Adaptive Optical Systems in Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF with Different Control Principles

Abstract

We report the results of performance of closed-loop adaptive optical systems intended for phase correction of pulsed and cw laser beams. The conventional control of adaptive system is based on wavefront sensing (e.g., Hartmann-Shack) and following deformation of adaptive mirror surface. We demonstrate the results of such static phase correction in the cases of the vortex laser beam and the powerful laser beam of pulsed “Luch” facility. On other side, applying the sensor-less approach we perform the dynamic phase correction of tip-tilts and higher phase aberrations of laser beams using the stochastic parallel gradient algorithm embedded into the special control units with microcontroller that considerably broadens the system operation bandwidth.