Compensating for thermal blooming of repetitively pulsed lasers

Abstract

In this paper, we have theoretically evaluated the effects of phase compensation as a technique for significantly reducing thermal blooming of repetitively pulsed lasers. The phase correction at the laser is determined by analyzing the propagation characteristics of a point source located at the geometric focal plane. Reciprocity ensures that, in the thermal blooming calculation, all rays will converge to the geometric focal plane. The main conclusion reached is that thermal blooming of low PRF lasers can be completely compensated for and a diffraction-limited irradiance distribution can be obtained at the focal plane.