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Single-frequency Nd:YAG laser with LG01 donut mode output

Single-frequency Nd:YAG laser with LG01 donut mode output
Single-frequency Nd:YAG laser with LG01 donut mode output
Laguerre-Gaussian (LG0n) laser beams with a donut-shaped profile are attracting growing interest due to a wealth of applications in areas such as optical manipulation of particles, trapping and guiding of atoms, laser drilling and writing and super-resolution microscopy. Here we report a diode-end-pumped single-frequency Nd:YAG laser using a novel fiber-based pump beam conditioning element to achieve lasing on the lowest order donut (LG01) mode. The pump conditioning element was fabricated from a capillary (hollow-core) silica fiber with a 200 µm outer diameter and a 105 µm diameter inner air hole. The fiber was tapered and spliced to a fiber-coupled laser diode with a maximum output power of 4 W at 808 nm. The capillary fiber yielded ~3.5 W of output in a beam with a ring-shaped near-field profile. The latter was imaged into a Nd:YAG rod in a two-mirror plano-concave resonator to selectively excite the LG01 mode. The laser produced up to 1.71 W of multi-axial-mode output at 1064 nm for 3.5 W of incident pump power. The corresponding slope efficiency was 57%. Single-axial-mode operation was achieved by inserting quarter-wave plates at both ends of the Nd:YAG rod to suppress spatial hole- burning together with an intracavity etalon. Using this set-up, we obtained 810 mW of single-frequency LG01 mode output with a well-defined sense of spiral phase for ~3.1 W of incident pump power. The beam propagation factor (M2) was measured to be ~2.09 and hence in close agreement with the theory. The prospects for further improvement in performance will be discussed.
Lin, Di
d858c2c7-6eab-49d8-87e7-6b71d9bad013
Daniel, Jae M.O.
6196e732-cd6c-43a7-bc9f-bc4f99e72c23
Clarkson, W.A.
3b060f63-a303-4fa5-ad50-95f166df1ba2
Lin, Di
d858c2c7-6eab-49d8-87e7-6b71d9bad013
Daniel, Jae M.O.
6196e732-cd6c-43a7-bc9f-bc4f99e72c23
Clarkson, W.A.
3b060f63-a303-4fa5-ad50-95f166df1ba2

Lin, Di, Daniel, Jae M.O. and Clarkson, W.A. (2013) Single-frequency Nd:YAG laser with LG01 donut mode output. SPIE Photonics West 2013, , San Francisco, United States. 02 - 07 Feb 2013.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Laguerre-Gaussian (LG0n) laser beams with a donut-shaped profile are attracting growing interest due to a wealth of applications in areas such as optical manipulation of particles, trapping and guiding of atoms, laser drilling and writing and super-resolution microscopy. Here we report a diode-end-pumped single-frequency Nd:YAG laser using a novel fiber-based pump beam conditioning element to achieve lasing on the lowest order donut (LG01) mode. The pump conditioning element was fabricated from a capillary (hollow-core) silica fiber with a 200 µm outer diameter and a 105 µm diameter inner air hole. The fiber was tapered and spliced to a fiber-coupled laser diode with a maximum output power of 4 W at 808 nm. The capillary fiber yielded ~3.5 W of output in a beam with a ring-shaped near-field profile. The latter was imaged into a Nd:YAG rod in a two-mirror plano-concave resonator to selectively excite the LG01 mode. The laser produced up to 1.71 W of multi-axial-mode output at 1064 nm for 3.5 W of incident pump power. The corresponding slope efficiency was 57%. Single-axial-mode operation was achieved by inserting quarter-wave plates at both ends of the Nd:YAG rod to suppress spatial hole- burning together with an intracavity etalon. Using this set-up, we obtained 810 mW of single-frequency LG01 mode output with a well-defined sense of spiral phase for ~3.1 W of incident pump power. The beam propagation factor (M2) was measured to be ~2.09 and hence in close agreement with the theory. The prospects for further improvement in performance will be discussed.

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 2013
Venue - Dates: SPIE Photonics West 2013, , San Francisco, United States, 2013-02-02 - 2013-02-07
Organisations: Optoelectronics Research Centre

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 371705
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/371705
PURE UUID: dabff9f3-7242-4b66-b348-74bc84a934c8
ORCID for Di Lin: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5025-9051

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 13 Nov 2014 11:53
Last modified: 06 Feb 2023 18:24

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Contributors

Author: Di Lin ORCID iD
Author: Jae M.O. Daniel
Author: W.A. Clarkson

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