Paper
9 June 2014 Transverse mode selection in laser resonators using volume Bragg gratings
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Abstract
Power scaling of high power laser resonators is limited due to several nonlinear effects. Scaling to larger mode areas can offset these effects at the cost of decreased beam quality, limiting the brightness that can be achieved from the multi-mode system. In order to improve the brightness from such multi-mode systems, we present a method of transverse mode selection utilizing volume Bragg gratings (VBGs) as an angular filter, allowing for high beam quality from large mode area laser resonators. An overview of transverse mode selection using VBGs is given, with theoretical models showing the effect of the angular selectivity of transmitting VBGs on the resonator modes. Applications of this ideology to the design of laser resonators, with cavity designs and experimental results presented for three types of multimode solid state lasers: a Nd:YVO4 laser with 1 cm cavity length and 0.8 mm diameter beam with an M2 of 1.1, a multimode diode with diffraction limited far field divergence in the slow axis, and a ribbon fiber laser with 13 cores showing M2 improved from 11.3 to 1.5.
© (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Brian Anderson, George Venus, Daniel Ott, Ivan Divliansky, Jay W. Dawson, Derrek R. Drachenberg, Mike J. Messerly, Paul H. Pax, John B. Tassano, and Leonid Glebov "Transverse mode selection in laser resonators using volume Bragg gratings", Proc. SPIE 9081, Laser Technology for Defense and Security X, 90810Y (9 June 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2053291
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Cited by 3 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Diffraction

Resonators

Diffraction gratings

Fiber Bragg gratings

Laser resonators

Diodes

Fiber lasers

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