title: Adaptive phase distortion correction in strong speckle-modulation conditions.
abstract: We introduce beam-quality metrics for adaptive wave-front control that permit estimation of the degree of laser beam energy concentration on a remotely located extended object based upon the backscattered wave intensity distribution at the receiver. A 37-control-channel adaptive optics system with phase correction of the output wave capable of operating in the presence of speckle-field-induced strong intensity modulation is presented. System operation is based on optimization of the speckle-field-based metric by the stochastic parallel gradient descent technique. Results demonstrate that adaptive wave-front correction using speckle-field-based beam-quality metrics can significantly improve laser beam concentration on extended objects.
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Vorontsov
authors.forename: G W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Carhart