A bright, pulsed, guide star laser for very large telescopes

Abstract

We demonstrate for the first time the practical feasibility of a new sodium guide star laser with a pulsed burst output of sufficient energy at 589nm to be useful for current applications and readily scalable to meet future requirements. We describe complete experimental design verification results of the pulse burst laser concept, optimized to eliminate guide-star elongation issues and to meet all requirements for Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) for future extremely large ground-based telescopes (ELTs). It makes use of sum frequency generation (SFG) of two, Q-switched, injection mode-locked, wavelength stabilized Nd:YAG lasers, producing a macro-micro, pulse-burst output which is optimized in power and bandwidth to maximize the fluorescence from the high altitude sodium layer. © 2010 SPIE.