REAL TIME WAVEFRONT SENSING FOR ULTRAFAST HIGH-POWER LASER BEAMS – Oral Paper

A real-time Hartmann-Shack sensor adapted to measure ultrafast and high-power laser beams has been built. Wavefront aberrations were measured at two different temporal rates. Results show that for a 7-mm pupil, most of the root-mean square wavefront error is due to low order aberrations. This still happens after re-alignment of the optics inside the cavity. Wavefront was found to be stable over time, indicating an initial potential benefit with only static correction. For higher intensity regimes, we expect larger temporal variability and the need for real time corrections.