Advanced Laser Beam Control Technology and Applications
A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2025 | Viewed by 111
Special Issue Editors
Interests: adaptive optics for laser systems; laser beam combination; laser beam quantity control; laser beam characterization; laser beam propagation in the atmosphere; optical sensors; laser systems
Interests: adaptive optics for laser systems; laser beam quantity control; laser beam characterization; beam director; optical system design
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Beam control is a critical and challenging technology for high-power laser systems, extending from laser emissions to precise engagement of targets. As the average power of lasers increases to higher levels, the detrimental impact of thermal and nonlinear effects on beam quality increases. Adaptive optics and phase conjugate mirrors are seamlessly integrated to achieve near diffraction-limit beam qualities. The power or energy of a single laser is inherently limited, prompting the invention of innovative beam combination techniques to further increase the power by combining multiple laser beams into one beam with high beam quality. Prior to the launch, the laser beam has to propagate inside some tubes or enclosures, heating the gases in the beam path and lowering the beam quality. Both passive and active beam path conditioning techniques are employed to mitigate this effect. The target must be precisely tracked and pointed throughout the laser launch, which involves sophisticated optical imaging and ranging sensors, sophisticated control systems, and advanced or even artificial intelligence-powered algorithms for target identification and tracking. During the laser beam’s propagation towards the target in the atmosphere, turbulence, aero-optics effects, and thermal blooming cause beam wondering and degraded beam qualities, which greatly decrease the power density and must be compensated for with state-of-the-art approaches such as adaptive optics.
Beam control plays a fundamental role in guaranteeing the effectiveness of high-power laser systems. The concurrent advancements in beam control technologies have significantly propelled the development of advanced high-power laser systems. This Special Issue is devoted to a wide variety of topics relevant to advanced laser beam control technology and applications. Authors are invited to submit full research articles and review manuscripts addressing (but not limited to) the following topics:
- Spectral, coherent, and other technologies of laser beam combination.
- Laser beam quality improvement using adaptive optics, stimulated Brillouin scattering and other methods.
- Beam path conditioning of high-power laser systems.
- Laser beam propagation in the atmosphere and mitigation of turbulence.
- Aero-optic effects and their mitigation.
- Laser beam directors and related techniques of target acquisition, pointing, and tracking.
- Applications of beam control including directed energy, free-space optical communication, power transmission, and laser guide star.
Prof. Dr. Lizhi Dong
Dr. Xin Yu
Dr. Qing Ye
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- laser beam combination
- laser beam quality
- beam path conditioning
- laser beam propagation
- thermal blooming
- atmospheric turbulence
- beam director
- adaptive optics
- free-space optical communication
- aero-optics
- laser guide star
- acquisition, pointing and tracking
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