Preface to Second Edition

This second edition of Beam Control for Laser Systems has been significantly reworked by the authors. The first edition of the book used classical control approaches for the entire book. The primary goals of the current edition were to include modern control approaches and to provide more optical equation fundamentals. The modern control objective was accomplished by adding four new chapters: Chapters 6, 8, 9, and 10, respectively, cover modern control modeling, least squares techniques, Kalman filtering, and smoothing. The optics objective was also accomplished by adding a new chapter: Chapter 2 is dedicated to developing the fundamental optical equations used in beam control. Another topics, aero-optics, was expanded on in this edition via adding Chapter 4. Most of the first-edition information has been retained although certain elements were shortened and new material included in all chapters. The last chapter of the first edition, focused on systems analysis using controls models and error budgets, was omitted. Much of the material in the first-edition appendices is retained in the current one. Exercises are located in most chapters in this edition; solutions are found on the companion CD.

This edition of the book brings together the expertise of two authors. With over 40 years of experience past his doctorate, Paul Merritt is primarily a controls engineer. He worked for several years in a vibrations laboratory prior to transferring to the Air force Weapons Laboratory and laser systems. His work on laser systems includes data analysis, controls design, flight testing, and simulations. He also taught controls classes at the University of New Mexico for seven years. Mark Spencer, with five years of experience past his doctorate, is primarily an optical scientist and engineer. He works at the Air Force Research Laboratory in adaptive optics where he has specialized in atmospheric transmission and compensation.

The authors found that their diverse backgrounds made working together on this book very enjoyable. They would like to thank several people for their assistance in revising and improving this second edition: Matthias Banet, Terry Brennan, Richard Brunson, Stanislav Gordeyev, Eric Jumper, and Larry Sher for comments and direction; Directed Energy Professional Society editor-in-chief and publisher, Sam Blankenship, for many suggestions and much needed guidance in assembling the book; and technical editor Barbara Kohl and production editor Caroly Leyba who were excellent to work with and significantly improved the book.

Preface to First Edition

Dr. Paul Merritt has worked on laser systems for 35 years, and has taught control theory at the University of New Mexico for approximately 12 years. Therefore, this book will be biased towards control theory problems and solutions as applied to laser beam control. Dr. Merritt joined the U.S. Air Force Civil Service in 1966 and had the opportunity to start work on laser systems for the Air Force in 1974. Dr. Merritt interrupted his civil service career in 1983 to work for Hughes Aircraft until 1987 and then rejoined the civil service until retirement in 1997. He then worked for Boeing-SVS for 6 years. During this time Boeing developed an internal class on laser systems that included not only beam control but details on optical design and propagation. Upon retirement from Boeing the author developed a subset of the Boeing class and has taught a beam control class for the Directed Energy Professional Society for about 8 years.