Optical terminal error analysis for high-power laser pulses based on ZEMAX

In the high-power laser, the pulse must be stretched in time, amplified, compressed in a grating compressor and subsequently focused by off-axis parabola in order to obtain high peak power. In the optical terminal, the grating compressor and off-axis parabola are the critical components to assemble. Some models in ZEMAX are used to characterize the spatially resolved far-field beam distributions for several different terminal optical designs that include mono-grating, array-grating and multi-beam compressor configurations. The various angular errors in the models are discussed for the optical assemblies of the grating compressor and parabola. The results show that the angular errors and piston error should be controlled under ±0.5μrad and ±λ/10μm respectively for different optical terminal.