PRANAB K MUKHOPADHYAY, K RANGANATHAN, JOGY GEORGE, S K SHARMA and T P S NATHAN

Diode Pumped Solid State Laser Group, Center for Advanced Technology, Indore 452 013, India
Email: pkm@cat.ernet.in

 Abstract.

The dependence of the beam propagation factor (M² parameter) with the absorbed pump power in the case of monolithic microchip laser under face-cooled configuration is extensively studied. Our investigations show that the M² parameter is related to the absorbed pump power through two parameters (a and b ) whose values depend on the laser material properties and laser configuration. We have shown that one parameter arises due to the oscillation of higher order modes in the microchip cavity and the other parameter accounts for the spherical aberration associated with the thermal lens induced by the pump beam. Such dependency of M² parameter with the absorbed pump power is experimentally verified for a face-cooled monolithic microchip laser based on Nd³⁺ -doped GdVO₄ crystal and the values of a and b parameters were estimated from the experimentally measured data points.

Keywords:  Monolithic laser; thermal lens; diode pumping; spherical aberration; M² parameter.

Pacs Nos.  42.60.Lh; 42.60.Da; 42.60.By; 42.55.Rz