Abstract: A laser mirror mounting arrangement for a laser formed within a laser body is shown. The mounting arrangement includes a mounting base mounted upon the laser body. A stem is attached to the mounting base to which, in turn, the laser mirror is mounted. The stem has a coefficient of thermal expansion selected to maintain the mirror in a fixed position. This is accomplished by permitting the stem to expand due to thermal expansion in one direction, while the laser body expands due to thermal expansion in the opposite direction.

Abstract: A technique for coherent aperture filling by amplitude phase exchange is described which suppresses the far field side lobes of an array of lasers. The power contained in these side lobes is transferred to the central lobe so that it contains greater than 90% of the total array power. This is achieved by a field transformation which generates from the uniform phase and varying amplitude distribution of the input array a varying phase modulation with nearly uniform, i.e., aperture filled, amplitude distribution in the output beam. Far-field grating lobes from the nonuniformity in phase are then suppressed by an additional phase correcting element matched to compensate the phase modulation. In a preferred embodiment, the field transformation element, including a single step binary phase shifter flanked by a pair of lenses in an a focal imaging configuration, is followed by a binary phase grating for phase compensation.