High-power cw laser windows: edge cooled or face cooled?

摘要

Thermally induced optical distortions severely degrade the quality of a laser beam thus reducing the irradiance on target. The purpose of this paper is to formulate procedures for evaluating the impact of spherical aberrations generated by cooled cylindrical optics that transmit cw laser radiation; specifically, the paper concerns edge- and face-cooled laser windows and examines how beam shape and cooling strength affect the performance.