Open AccessTheoretical and experimental investigations on wavefront distortion and thermal-stress induced birefringence in a laser diode pumped helium gas-cooled multislab Nd:glass laser amplifier
Author(s) -
Wenfa Huang,
Xuechun Li,
Jiangfeng Wang,
Xinghua Lu,
Yuqi Zhang,
Wei Fan,
Lin Zhang
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
wuli xuebao
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 47
ISSN - 1000-3290
DOI - 10.7498/aps.64.087801
Subject(s) - materials science , laser , optics , amplifier , birefringence , wavefront , distortion (music) , helium , diode , thermal , laser beam quality , laser power scaling , optoelectronics , physics , atomic physics , cmos , meteorology , laser beams
Thermal effect is still the most serious problem: it restricts the high power and high beam quality of solid laser to be further enhanced. The efficient thermal management is an important approach to suppress the thermal effect. In this paper, the thermal effect in a gas-cooled laser diode pumped multislab Nd:glass amplifier operating at a repetition rate is investigated in detail both theoretically and experimentally. The three-dimensional distributions of temperature, stress, strain, and birefringence are calculated by a finite element analysis. Based on these data, the thermally induced wavefront distortions and depolarization losses are determined with considering six slabs and one laser head. It is revealed that the theoretical data are in good agreement with the experimental results: the total wavefront distortion is 6.77 and a depolarization loss of more than 90% accumulates over six slabs when the heat deposition is 0.7 W/cm3.