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DPAL, a new class of diode pumped alkali vapor lasers, offers the prospect for high efficiency cw laser radiation at near-infrared wavelengths: cesium 895 nm, rubidium 795 nm, and potassium 770 nm. The physics of DPAL lasers are outlined, and the results of laboratory demonstrations using a titanium sapphire surrogate pump are summarized, along with benchmarked device models. DPAL electrical efficiencies of 25-30% are projected and near-diffraction-limited DPAL device power scaling into the multi-kilowatt regime from a single aperture is also projected.

Results of experiments with the laser guide star adaptive optics system on the 3-meter Shane telescope at Lick Observatory have demonstrated a factor of 4 performance improvement over previous results. Stellar images recorded at a wavelength of 2 micrometers were corrected to over 40 percent of the theoretical diffraction-limited peak intensity. For the previous two years, this sodium-layer laser guide star system has corrected stellar images at this wavelength to approximately 10 percent of the theoretical peak intensity limit. After a campaign to improve the beam quality of the laser system, and to improve calibration accuracy and stability of the adaptive optics system using new techniques for phase retrieval and phase-shifting diffraction interferometry, the system performance has been substantially increased. The next step will be to use the Lick system for astronomical science observations, and to demonstrate this level of performance with the new system being installed on the 10-meter Keck II telescope.

A laser system to generate sodium-layer guide stars has been designed, built and delivered to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The system uses frequency doubled YAG lasers to pump liquid dye lasers and produces 20 W of average power. The design and performance results of this laser system are presented.

Atmospheric turbulence severely limits the resolution of ground-based telescopes. Adaptive optics can correct for the aberrations caused by the atmosphere, but requires a bright wavefront reference source in close angular proximity to the object being imaged. Since natural reference stars of the necessary brightness are relatively rare, methods of generating artificial reference beacons have been under active investigation for more than a decade. In this paper, we report the first significant image improvement achieved using a sodium-layer laser guide star as a wavefront reference for a high-order adaptive optics system. An artificial beacon was created by resonant scattering from atomic sodium in the mesosphere, at an altitude of 95 km. Using this laser guide star, an adaptive optics system on the 3 m Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory produced a factor of 2.4 increase in peak intensity and a factor of 2 decrease in full width at half maximum of a stellar image, compared with image motion compensation alone. The Strehl ratio when using the laser guide star as the reference was 65% of that obtained with a natural guide star, and the image full widths at half maximum were identical, 0.3 arc sec, using either the laser or the natural guide star. This sodium-layer laser guide star technique holds great promise for the world's largest telescopes.

The installation and performance characteristics of a 20 W sodium beacon laser system for the 3 m Shane telescope at the Lick Observatory are presented.