Abstract
In this paper, we present a first-time, to the best of our knowledge, systematic investigation into the applicability of the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm for measuring the thermally induced phase distortion of laser beams. We propose an experimental approach based on the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm for thermal lens measurements with optimized convergence rate and accuracy. It is shown that the method performs well in measuring optically transparent and highly scattering media, and also can provide a quantitative comparison of samples in terms of optical absorption and output beam aberrations. The dependence of the thermal lens dioptric power on the radiation power was investigated in a TGG crystal and Tb2O3 ceramic. Additionally, the possibility of estimating of the aberrations of thermal lenses was shown.