Solid-state lasers at the stability limit: constant beam properties over large power ranges

Without adaptive optics high-power lasers suffer either from poor beam quality or limited power ranges. A laser can be forced to operate on its stability limit by self-adaptive overcompensation resulting in constant and good beam quality over a large power range. With this technique, the brightness of a Nd:YAG laser was increased by almost an order of magnitude despite highly aberrated thermal lens in the laser rod.