Abstract
What we believe to be novel pumping schemes for lamp-pumped solid-state lasers are proposed. Based on the refractive and total internal reflection principles, curved fused-silica light guides of rectangular cross sections are used to couple the pump radiation from an arc lamp into a laser crystal. The performances of light-guide pumping schemes are analyzed through a nonsequential ray-trace program and are compared to that of a single elliptical cavity. Improved pump radiation distribution around the laser crystal was registered. The light-guide cavities also permit tailoring the pump flux distribution within the active medium. A lamp-pumped Nd:YAG laser by a light-guide cavity was built and tested. An overall laser efficiency of 1.1% was measured.
| Original language | English |
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| Pages (from-to) | 3811-3816 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Applied Optics |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue number | 16 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2006 |