High Power Optically Pumped Semiconductor Lasers for Sodium Guidestar Applications

Optically pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSLs) are shown to provide a much more compact and less expensive source for illumination of the sodium layer of the mesosphere for use as a sodium laser guidestar via single and two photon excitation schemes. This represents a revolution in laser guidestar technology as the cost, size, and power requirements for a laser guidestar system are shown to have been decreased by an order of magnitude with guidestar performance shown to be similar to previous sources. Sodium laser guidestar sources for broadband simultaneous illumination of multiple lines are developed and simulated. Simulations are then compared to actual returns for multi-line sodium laser guidestars. The simultaneous multi-line laser guidestar is shown to be superior to the single line laser guidestar for equal output powers both via modeling and via on sky returns performed at Starfire Optical Range (SOR) with a combination of a legacy narrowband laser guidestars and a broadband OPSL guidestar. The multi-line OPSL guidestars are shown to provide the first continuous wave source for use as a polychromatic laser guidestar (PLGS) to correct for tip and tilt aberrations. Different methods for utilization of the PLGS