Way of detecting entire beam path aberrations of laser systems based on a phase-retrieval method

A method is presented to detect entire beam path aberrations of many laser systems, especially the SG-III inertial confinement fusion (ICF) laser system, which is under construction in China. Instead of a Hartman-Shack (HS) sensor, a CCD will be introduced into the target chamber of the ICF laser system. The HS sensor and the CCD could record the near-field wavefront distributions and the intensity signals of their corresponding focal spots, respectively. An amendatory phase-retrieval method is introduced to reconstruct the aberrations of the entire beam path from near-field wavefront distributions and their corresponding focal spots intensity. Principle experimental results indicate that the aberrations of the entire beam path of a laser system can be precisely detected based on this method.