Adaptive optics in a multistage TiS laser

We describe a novel scheme consisting of two deformable mirrors that can free ultrashort laser pulses from simultaneously present severe wavefront distortions and strong intensity-profile modulations. This scheme is applied to the MPQ 10-TW TiS laser facility ATLAS. We demonstrate that thereby the focusability of the ATLAS pulses can be improved from 1018 to 2x1019 W/cm2 without any penalty in recompression fidelity by using adaptive optical system.