Shuzhen Nie

Thermal effect of large-diameter laser rod in multi-direction side-pump high power pulsed Nd:YAG laser amplifier

In this paper, a 15-direction ring laser diode array is chosen as pumping source in order to get uniform pump in laser medium. The diameter of laser rod is 15mm for obtaining high output laser energy. A numerical model of the side-pump pulsed Nd:YAG laser amplifier is set up. The finite element method using Ansys software is adopted to analyze the time-varying thermal effect. In order to find the temperature influence of the pump light’s distribution, the temperature distributions in laser rod loaded by 15-direction Gaussian beam and simplified uniform beam are calculated and the results are comparatively analyzed. Despite the highest temperature in laser rod is different, the whole variation trend is similar which indicates time-varying characteristic. The thermal lens effect is also calculated and the results indicate that the temperature gradient in the medium plays the most important role. This study could provide a simulation tool to evaluate the thermal effect of the laser amplifier.

Design and Analysis of Flat-Top Beam Produced by Diffractive Optical Element

The modified Gerchberg-Saxton (G-S) methods of diffractive optical elements are presented for converting a Gaussian beam into a flat-top beam. The sample points of the input and output planes are discussed based on the sampling principle. The relationship between weighting factor, empirical constant, diffractive efficiency, and intensity uniformity is investigated. The simulation results of different modified methods are calculated when the incident beams are the same. The results show that the intensity uniformity of the output flat-top beam is the best when using the ST modified method.