12-15 July 2011
Saint George Hotel
Africa/Johannesburg timezone

Generation of a Laguerre-Gaussian TEM01 mode in a monolithic microchip laser

14 Jul 2011, 17:00
2h
Asteria

Asteria

Poster Presentation Track C - Lasers, Optics and Spectroscopy Poster2

Speaker

Mr Darryl Naidoo (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research)

Description

We explore a method in the selection of a specific higher-order mode through judicious shaping of the pump light to create a high modal overlap with the desired mode. To demonstrate this principle, we create a donut-shaped pump profile in the focal plane of a converging lens by use of a beam shaping element. This pump profile is used to longitudinally pump a monolithic microchip laser and a plano-concave resonator cavity where we achieve a TEM01 output with powers of ~12 mW and ~14 mW at slope efficiencies of 17% and 21% respectively. In both cases the modal purity is high with a beam quality factor of ~2. Diffractive pump shaping of this form is advantageous as it allows for high pump intensity even with low pumping powers, thus ensuring sufficient gain is achieved for laser oscillation.

Level (Hons, MSc, <br> &nbsp; PhD, other)? MSc
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)? No
Consider for a student <br> &nbsp; award (Yes / No)? Yes

Primary author

Mr Darryl Naidoo (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research)

Co-authors

Prof. Andrew Forbes (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) Prof. Kamel Aït-Ameur (CIMAP—ENSICAEN)

Presentation Materials

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