Modeling for Deformable Mirrors and the Adaptive-Optics Optimization Program

We discuss aspects of adaptive optics optimization for large fusion laser systems such as the 192-arm National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. By way of example we considered the discrete actuator deformable mirror and Hartmann sensor system used on the Beamlet laser. Beamlet is a single-aperture prototype of the 11-0-5 slab amplifier design for NIF, and so we expect similar optical distortion levels and deformable mirror correction requirements. We are now in the process of developing a numerically efficient object oriented C++ language implementation of our adaptive optics and wavefront sensor code, but this code is not yet operational. The results shown below are based instead on the prototype algorithms, coded-up in an integrated array processing computer language.