Thermally near-unstable resonator design for solid state lasers

Yan Feng; Yong Bi; Zuyan Xu; Guangyin Zhang

doi:10.1117/12.472930

25 June 2003 Thermally near-unstable cavity design for solid state lasers

Yan Feng, Yong Bi, Zuyan Xu, Guangyin Zhang

Proceedings Volume 4969, Laser Resonators and Beam Control VI; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.472930
Event: High-Power Lasers and Applications, 2003, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Conventionally, lasers are designed to operate at the middle of thermally stable zones, where the fundamental mode size is insensitive to thermal perturbation, but is inversely proportional to width of stability zone, which will give rise to inconvenience or even difficulty in practice when large mode size is required. We propose a new simple approach, namely thermally-near-unstable resonator. The laser is designed to operate at the border of stability zone instead, where it has large fundamental mode size at gain media. With increase of pump power, mode size would grow up automatically to a value suitable for monomode operation. Stability of cavity on whole pump range can also be easily guaranteed. And there is a point where the laser power is insensitive to driving perturbations. However, the laser beam quality is sensitive to driving and thermal perturbations for the mode size depends severely on thermal focusing. Large-scale improvement in beam quality is demonstrated experimentally.

Citation Download Citation

Yan Feng, Yong Bi, Zuyan Xu, and Guangyin Zhang "Thermally near-unstable cavity design for solid state lasers", Proc. SPIE 4969, Laser Resonators and Beam Control VI, (25 June 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.472930

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