High-repetition-rate 100 W level sodium beacon laser for a multi-conjugate adaptive optics system

Abstract

A 100 W level kilohertz repetition-rate microsecond (mu s)-pulse all-solid-state sodium beacon laser at 589 nm is demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, via combining two independent mu s-pulsed lasers. Each beamlet is generated by the sum-frequency mixing of pulsed. 1064 and 1319 nm lasers in a lithium triborate (LBO) crystal, which operate at 500 Hz pulse repetition frequency with 61 W p-polarized and 53 Ws-polarized output, respectively. An incoherent sequence combining technology of polarized laser beams is employed to add the two beamlets. The average power of the combined beam is up to 107.5 W with a combining efficiency of 94.3%. The combined beam has a 1 kHz repetition rate with similar to 120 mu s pulse duration and beam quality M-2 = 1.41. The central wavelength with a linewidth of similar to 0.3 GHz is locked to a sodium D-2a absorption line. To the best of our knowledge, this is a record-high power operating at kilohertz for mu s-pulsed solid-state sodium beacon lasers. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America