Method and apparatus for efficient operation of optically pumped laser
First Claim
1. An optically pumped laser comprising an optical resonator cavity, a laser medium in said resonator cavity, said laser medium having an optical axis and two ends, one end at each of two opposite sides of said medium intersected by said optical axis, an array of laser diodes positioned for pumping said laser medium in the direction of the axis of said resonator cavity, and means for causing the pump distribution from said array of laser diodes to be concentrated inside the lasing mode volume of said medium.
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Abstract
An optically pumped single mode laser, e.g., Nd:YAG crystal (20) with planoconcave mirrors is increased in efficiency by an order of magnitude to about 8% by optics (25, 27) for focusing the high power multimode output of laser diode arrays (21, 22) into the mode volume (20'"'"') of the laser medium (20). A plurality of these optically pumped single mode lasers (1-4) may be cascaded in a ring with dichroic mirrors (M1 -M4) at the corners for coupling in the laser diode arrays, each having its own means for spatially tailoring its beam to concentrate pump distribution inside the lasing mode volume of the medium. An InGaAlAs pump diode (30) with its wavelength the same as the lasing medium makes the ring unidirectional.
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9 Claims
- 1. An optically pumped laser comprising an optical resonator cavity, a laser medium in said resonator cavity, said laser medium having an optical axis and two ends, one end at each of two opposite sides of said medium intersected by said optical axis, an array of laser diodes positioned for pumping said laser medium in the direction of the axis of said resonator cavity, and means for causing the pump distribution from said array of laser diodes to be concentrated inside the lasing mode volume of said medium.
- 6. An optically pumped single mode laser comprising an optical resonator cavity, a laser medium in said resonator cavity, said laser medium having an optical axis and two ends, one end at each of two opposite sides of said laser medium intersected by said optical axis, an array of multimode laser diodes positioned for pumping said laser medium in the direction of the axis of said resonator cavity, and means for concentration of the pump distribution from said multimode laser diodes inside the lasing mode volume of said laser medium.
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