Solid-state lasers at the stability limit: constant beam properties over large power ranges

Author

Wyss, Eduard ; Graf, Thomas ; Weber, Heinz P.

Author_Institution

Inst. of Appl. Phys., Univ. of Bern, Switzerland

Volume

41

Issue

5

fYear

2005

fDate

5/1/2005 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

671

Lastpage

676

Abstract

Without adaptive optics high-power lasers suffer either from poor beam quality or limited power ranges. A laser can be forced to operate on its stability limit by self-adaptive overcompensation resulting in constant and good beam quality over a large power range. With this technique, the brightness of a Nd:YAG laser was increased by almost an order of magnitude despite highly aberrated thermal lens in the laser rod.

Keywords

aberrations; adaptive optics; brightness; compensation; laser beams; laser cavity resonators; laser stability; lenses; neodymium; optical pumping; solid lasers; thermal lensing; YAG:Nd; YAl5O12:Nd; aberrated thermal lens; adaptive optics; beam quality; brightness; laser rod; self-adaptive overcompensation; solid-state lasers; stability limit; Laser beams; Laser noise; Laser stability; Laser tuning; Lenses; Optical distortion; Optical resonators; Power lasers; Solid lasers; Thermal lensing; Adaptive optics; Neodymium:YAG lasers; laser beam distortion; laser resonators; laser stability; laser thermal factors; laser tuning;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.2005.845932

Filename

1424250