Improvement of the LULI high-energy CPA laser system focusability and repetition rate using an adaptive optical system

We have implemented on the LULI 100 TW laser facility a closed-loop Adaptive Optics system composed of a large aperature dielectric coated deformable mirror and a home-made shearing interferometer. Significant results have been obtained with this system: not only the beam focusability has been improved to a Strehl ratio of 0.9 but it has also been kept at this level for a sequence full-energy shots, with a repetition rate of 20 minutes, through systematic compensation of the cumulative thermal load generated in the large disk amplifiers.