Pump-induced lensing effects in diode pumped Alexandrite lasers
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Published version
Author(s)
Tawy, Goronwy
Wang, Jian
Damzen, Michael
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
It is essential to understand the pump-induced lensing and aberration effects in solid-state lasers, such as Alexandrite, since these set limits on laser power scaling whilst maintaininghigh spatial TEM00beam quality. In this work, we present direct wavefront measurements ofpump-induced lensing and spherical aberration using a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, for thefirst time, in a diode-pumped Alexandrite laser, and under both non-lasing and lasing conditions.The lens dioptric power is found to be weakly sub-linear with respect to the absorbed pumppower, and under lasing, the lensing power is observed to decrease to60 %of its non-lasingvalue. The results are inconsistent with a thermal lens model but a fuller theoretical formulationis made of a combined thermal and population lens model giving good quantitative agreementto the observed pump power dependence of the induced-lensing under non-lasing conditionsand the reduced lensing under lasing conditions. The deduced value for the difference inexcited to ground state polarizability is consistent with prior measurement estimates for otherchromium-doped gain media. The finding of this paper provide new insight into pump-inducedlensing in Alexandrite and also provides a basis for a fast saturable population lens mechanism toaccount for self-Q-switching observed recently in Alexandrite laser systems.
Date Issued
2019-11-25
Date Acceptance
2019-11-11
Citation
Optics Express, 2019, 27 (24), pp.35865-35883
ISSN
1094-4087
Publisher
Optical Society of America (OSA)
Start Page
35865
End Page
35883
Journal / Book Title
Optics Express
Volume
27
Issue
24
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Sponsor
European Space Agency / Estec
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Grant Number
4000115840/15/NL/RA/zk
EP/R511547/1
Subjects
Optics
0205 Optical Physics
1005 Communications Technologies
0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Publication Status
Published