Abstract:
A high extraction efficiency laser system (30). The novel laser system (30) includes a master oscillator (32) for providing a laser beam, an amplifier (18) adapted to amplify the laser beam, and an aberrator (42) for aberrating the laser beam to prevent the formation of caustic intensity patterns within the amplifier (18). In an illustrative embodiment, the laser system (30) also includes a depolarizer (44) disposed between the master oscillator (32) and the amplifier (18) to reduce the contrast of speckle intensity patterns in the amplifier (18), and a mechanism (46) adapted to rotate or otherwise move the aberrator (42) to time-vary the aberrations in the beam in order to increase the spatial homogenization of saturation and extraction patterns in the amplifier (18). In a preferred embodiment, the coherence length of the beam is also shortened to reduce interference fringes in the amplifier.