Passive beam pointing stabilization.

The stabilization of laser beam pointing is critical for many applications, such as interferometry and laser material processing. Active beam pointing stabilization techniques have been demonstrated, but they exhibit limitations when used in single-shot systems. A passive method for beam pointing stabilization based on image rotation and sum-frequency generation is presented and is capable of stabilizing the beam pointing on a single shot. An all-passive pointing stability improvement by 2 orders of magnitude is experimentally demonstrated in a compact setup with femtosecond laser pulses.