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In side pumped laser head geometries good extraction of energy has to be weighted against diffraction effects of the amplified beam. Beam clipping at the aperture of laser rods can be avoided by using an undoped cladding around the doped core. The wings of e. g. Gaussian beams can be accommodated in the cladding. Phase distortion by the refractive index step of the rod can be compensated by a phase conjugating mirror in double pass configuration. In our proof of principle experiment the brightness of the beam from core doped amplifier rods was shown to be doubled compared to a conventional rod of the same outer diameter. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America
A frequency stabilization scheme following the Pound-Drever-Hall technique modified with a sample and hold circuit has been applied to a Q-switched diode-pumped Nd:YAG ring oscillator. The high-power ring is injection seeded by a monolithic non-planar ring laser oscillator (NPRO). The slave oscillator emits pulses of 23 ns duration and 20 mJ pulse energy with almost diffraction limited beam quality (M-2 = 1.2) at a repetition rate of 400 Hz. The short-term fluctuation of the center frequency from pulse to pulse is 290 kHz. The oscillator is designed for applications within lidar measurements.
Correlations between photons are interesting for a number of applications and concepts in metrology, in particular for resolution improvements in different methods of quantum imaging. We demonstrate the application of a blazed grating for the characterization of the degree of spatial correlation of biphotons. The biphotons are generated by type II parametric downconversion. Compared to an ordinary transmission grating, a blazed grating shows a high diffraction efficiency only for a single order of diffraction. Thus, higher intensities in the Fraunhofer far field behind the grating, and easier photon counting, can be achieved. The distribution of the two-photon rate in the Fraunhofer far field of the blazed grating can show one additional order of diffraction with a visibility related to the degree of correlation of the biphotons. The number of spatial modes that are populated by the biphoton beam can be directly altered in our experiments. The relation of the spatial mode order of the photon propagation to the observable degree of spatial correlation of the biphotons is investigated and related to the Schmidt number of spatially entangled modes.
We study thermally induced birefringence in crystalline Nd:YAG zigzag slab lasers and the associated depolarization losses. The optimum crystallographic orientation of the zigzag slab within the Nd:YAG boule and photoelastic effects in crystalline Nd:YAG slabs are briefly discussed. The depolarization is evaluated using the temperature and stress distributions, calculated using a finite element model, for realistically pumped and cooled slabs of finite dimensions. Jones matrices are then used to calculate the depolarization of the zigzag laser mode. We compare the predictions with measurements of depolarization, and suggest useful criteria for the design of the gain media for such lasers.