Study of ideal phase compensation for an atmospheric thermal blooming effect in the upward transmission of high-energy lasers

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Nonlinear Optics
• Laser Physics

Background:

• Atmospheric thermal blooming (TB) is a critical nonlinear effect impacting high energy laser transmission.
• Adaptive optics (AO) partially mitigates TB but introduces phase compensation instability (PCI) due to correction errors, limiting effectiveness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the limits of ideal phase compensation in atmospheric thermal blooming.
• To understand the underlying causes of phase compensation instability (PCI) in AO-corrected laser systems.
• To investigate novel methods for improving TB correction.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Easy-Laser simulation software for laser propagation modeling.
• Investigated ideal phase compensation scenarios, neglecting AO correction errors.
• Analyzed the coupling effects of beam diffraction and phase compensation feedback.
• Exploratorily applied mean filtering for TB correction.

Main Results:

• Ideal phase compensation shows improvement over traditional AO but does not eliminate PCI.
• PCI is identified as arising from the coupling of beam diffraction and phase compensation positive feedback.
• Mean filtering demonstrated satisfactory results in correcting TB effects.
• Removing high-frequency phase fluctuations is identified as an effective strategy for TB correction.

Conclusions:

• Phase compensation instability (PCI) in AO systems for TB correction is driven by diffraction and feedback mechanisms.
• Mean filtering offers a promising approach for mitigating TB by addressing high-frequency phase fluctuations.
• Further research into filtering techniques could enhance the performance of AO systems for high energy laser transmission.