A method for aligning a femtosecond multi-petawatt coherent beam combining system

This work designs and implements a method for automatic aligning a petawatt-level coherent beam combination laser system, and tests the performance of this method through numerical simulations. Data "figure01.jpg" shows the configuration of laser system and the spatiotemporal distribution of laser focus of each beam as well as the combined beam. Data "figure02.jpg" shows the work flow of the automatic alignment. Data "figure03.jpg" describes the beam patterns at the focus after each stage of the optimizaiton process. Data "figure04.jpg" describes the spatiotemporal distributions of the focus after optimization with this method for a randomly generated laser system with various aberrations. Data "figure05.jpg" describes the optimization results for a system without grating aberrations, showing that the grating aberration is the key factor that limiting the system performance. Data "Visulization 1.mp4" shows the dynamic process of this optimization method.