End-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser with reduced thermal lensing via the use of a ring-shaped pump beam
End-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser with reduced thermal lensing via the use of a ring-shaped pump beam
A simple approach for alleviating thermal lensing in end-pumped solid-state lasers using a pump beam with a ring-shaped intensity distribution to decrease the radial temperature gradient is described. This scheme has been implemented in a diode-end-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser yielding 14 W of TEM00 output at 1.064 μm with a corresponding slope efficiency of 53% and a beam propagation factor (M2) of 1.08 limited by available pump power. By comparison, the same laser design with a conventional quasi-top-hat pump beam profile of approximately equal radial extent yielded only 9 W of output before the power rolled over due to thermal lensing. Further investigation with the aid of a probe beam revealed that the thermal lens power was ~30% smaller for the ring-shaped pump beam compared to the quasi-top-hat beam. The implications for further power scaling in end-pumped laser configurations are considered.
2910-2913
Lin, Di
d858c2c7-6eab-49d8-87e7-6b71d9bad013
Clarkson, W. Andrew
3b060f63-a303-4fa5-ad50-95f166df1ba2
1 August 2017
Lin, Di
d858c2c7-6eab-49d8-87e7-6b71d9bad013
Clarkson, W. Andrew
3b060f63-a303-4fa5-ad50-95f166df1ba2
Lin, Di and Clarkson, W. Andrew
(2017)
End-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser with reduced thermal lensing via the use of a ring-shaped pump beam.
Optics Letters, 42 (15), .
(doi:10.1364/OL.42.002910).
Abstract
A simple approach for alleviating thermal lensing in end-pumped solid-state lasers using a pump beam with a ring-shaped intensity distribution to decrease the radial temperature gradient is described. This scheme has been implemented in a diode-end-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser yielding 14 W of TEM00 output at 1.064 μm with a corresponding slope efficiency of 53% and a beam propagation factor (M2) of 1.08 limited by available pump power. By comparison, the same laser design with a conventional quasi-top-hat pump beam profile of approximately equal radial extent yielded only 9 W of output before the power rolled over due to thermal lensing. Further investigation with the aid of a probe beam revealed that the thermal lens power was ~30% smaller for the ring-shaped pump beam compared to the quasi-top-hat beam. The implications for further power scaling in end-pumped laser configurations are considered.
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End-pumped NdYVO4 laser with reduced thermal lensing_Accepted Version
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Accepted/In Press date: 30 June 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 30 June 2017
Published date: 1 August 2017
Organisations:
Optoelectronics Research Centre
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 412024
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/412024
ISSN: 0146-9592
PURE UUID: 452b1376-5e8a-47e1-bc1d-7e4ab231e90f
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2017 16:31
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 05:30
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Author:
Di Lin
Author:
W. Andrew Clarkson
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