Laboratory Experiments on Multiconjugate Adaptive Optics for Compensation of Strong Turbulence

The objective of the research is to experimentally investigate multi-conjugate adaptive optics for compensating strong atmospheric turbulence in laser beam propagation. By using multiple wavefront sensors and deformable mirrors placed at multiple conjugate planes along the beam propagation path, multi-conjugate adaptive optics allows for the simultaneous compensation of both the amplitude and phase of the propagating laser beam. This paper provides a description of the laboratory multi-conjugate adaptive optics testbed developed at the Naval Postgraduate School and presents current experimental results on the compensation of laboratory-simulated atmospheric turbulence using multi-conjugate adaptive optics.