Observation of laser formation inside a laser cavity containing a phase conjugate mirror

Abstract

Adaptive optics (AO) systems are used to compensate atmospheric perturbations on a propagating laser beam. However, AO needs a beacon to obtain the phase information. This paper presents a possible formation of beacon in target-in-theloop (TIL) geometry which is analog to a laser cavity. The TIL laser cavity is formed with a high reflectivity mirror on one end and an optical phase conjugate mirror as the second mirror. The TIL laser is initialized by a single frequency 10 ns Q-switched laser pulse. This is very similar to how an injection seeding or regenerative amplifier scheme starts a laser oscillation. With a cavity length of around 11 meters and an initial laser pulse of 10 ns, we have been able to isolate laser field images related to each round-trip pulse. Furthermore, by replacing the first mirror with a rough-surface target to simulate an uncooperative target and adding phase distortion elements to simulate atmospheric effects, we can observe the image status under such conditions.