OPTIMAL BEAM FORMING FOR LASER BEAM PROPAGATION ...

optics systems for laser beam control were developed to compensate for atmosphericturbulence in real time. As well as applications in astronomicalimaging, adaptive optics has also been widely studied and used in retinalimaging and vision correction. Many surveys and reviews in this area havebeen summarized [5, 58, 75, 33].There are three main components in a conventional adaptive optics system:wavefront sensing, electronic controller, and wavefront compensator.Turbulence properties can be measured from the distorted wavefront by usingwavefront sensing devices such as the shear-interferometer and Hartmannwavefront sensors. According to this wavefront measurement, the controllersends out actuator positioning control signals to wavefront compensatorssuch as deformable mirrors. The whole process is expected to perform ata higher rate than the rate of turbulence changing since this is a real timecompensation.Adaptive optics also have important applications in laser beam propagationthrough turbulence, such as the target-in-the-loop (TIL) problem. InTIL, laser beams are projected toward a target through random media andpropagated back after surface scattering at the target.This problem hasbeen involved in many applications such as laser target designation, remotesensing, and laser weapon systems [77]. In this dissertation, we will focus onthis laser beam projection problem.15