20 W and 50 W Guidestar Laser System Update for the Keck I and Gemini South Telescopes

Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies has developed 20 W and 50 W commercial solid-state sodium beacon Guidestar Laser Systems (GLS) for the Keck I and Gemini South telescopes, respectively. This work represents a critical step toward addressing the need of the astronomical adaptive optics (AO) community, including multi-conjugate AO and AO tomography for future extremely large telescopes. This paper describes the status of GLS for the Keck I and Gemini South telescopes. The design and experimental results of the laser oscillators, amplifiers and sum-frequency generator will be discussed.