Experimental investigation of segmented adaptive optics for spatial laser array in an atmospheric turbulence condition

We describe a concept of using segmented adaptive optics (AO) to correct the higher-order wavefront aberrations (HOWAs) in an atmospheric turbulence condition. The effects of piston and tip-tilt corrections are analyzed by numerical simulation. An experiment test-bed is built for verification. Seven spatial beamlets are combined into a hexagonal array by use of a pyramid, and an active segmented mirror is used for phase modulation. The AO control is implemented by stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm. Experimentally, after segmented AO is enabled, the HOWA in warmed air environment has been effectively corrected and the peak intensity of far-field has been enhanced by 5 times.