Compensation for thermally induced aberrations in optical elements by means of additional heating by CO2 laser radiation

A method is proposed for compensating thermally induced phase distortions of laser radiation in absorbing optical elements. The method is based on supplementary heating of the peripheral region of the distorting element by the radiation from an auxiliary laser. A programme code has been developed for calculating the optimal parameters of supplementary radiation for minimising phase distortions. This code is based on the numerical solution of the thermal conductivity and static elasticity equations for a nonuniformly heated solid of cylindrical symmetry. Experiments reveal a high efficiency of the method for compensating distortions resulting from absorption of radiation with a Gaussian intensity profile.