Passive alignment stability and automatic alignment of laser amplifiers based on Fourier transform propagation (Conference Presentation)

Karsten R. F. Schuhmann; Klaus S. Kirch; Mirosław Marszalek; Laura Sinkunaite; Ivo Schulthess; Manuel Zeyen; Aldo Antognini

doi:10.1117/12.2507613

13 March 2019 Passive alignment stability and automatic alignment of laser amplifiers based on Fourier transform propagation (Conference Presentation)

Karsten R. F. Schuhmann, Klaus S. Kirch, Mirosław Marszalek, Laura Sinkunaite, Ivo Schulthess, Manuel Zeyen, Aldo Antognini

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 10896, Solid State Lasers XXVIII: Technology and Devices; 108960U (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2507613
Event: SPIE LASE, 2019, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

For spectroscopy on muonic helium, we developed a thin-disk laser with an output pulse energy of 147 mJ capable of stochastic triggering (< 500 Hz) with a beam quality of M² = 1.04. We reached these values by implementing Fourier transform propagation from disk to disk. This architecture is passively compensating for phase front distortions caused by thermal lensing in the thin disk. The amplifier was not only very stable against thermal lens effects but was also forgiving misalignment of the disk. Indeed, it was operated for 3 months without realignment. Our design utilizes the gain profile of the active medium (effective soft aperture) to provide transversal mode filtering. As a result, the beam remains in the TEM00 mode during propagation in the amplifier. This implies that modeling of its propagation does not require techniques for higher-order mode propagation. Soft apertures can simply be modeled as lenses with imaginary focal length. We modeled the misalignment related losses for two different multi-pass amplifier designs reproducing the measured behavior. We also realized a simple control system to correct for tilt misalignment of the active medium. Only two servo-controlled folding mirrors inside the amplifier were sufficient to stabilize the beam position of all (eight) passes on the active medium. This active stabilization reduced the sensitivity (decrease of output energy) to tilts of the active medium by a factor of 10 compared to the multi-pass amplifier without active stabilization.

Conference Presentation

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Karsten R. F. Schuhmann, Klaus S. Kirch, Mirosław Marszalek, Laura Sinkunaite, Ivo Schulthess, Manuel Zeyen, and Aldo Antognini "Passive alignment stability and automatic alignment of laser amplifiers based on Fourier transform propagation (Conference Presentation)", Proc. SPIE 10896, Solid State Lasers XXVIII: Technology and Devices, 108960U (13 March 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2507613

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KEYWORDS

Amplifiers

Fourier transforms

Automatic alignment

Laser amplifiers

Laser development

Thermal effects

Helium

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