Active mode control of solid state laser using an intra-cavity beam shaper

Abstract

In high power solid state lasers, thermal lens effect always give rise to the multi-modes oscillation in the resonator. The beam quality will deteriorate with the increase of output power. In this paper, an intra-cavity beam shaper is introduced to actively compensate the thermal lens in the laser resonator. One round trip ABCD matrix of the resonator with an intra-cavity beam shaper and thermal lens is calculated. The design parameters with wide stable zone are concluded through the ABCD matrix. The mode size and stability diagram of the resonator are calculated under different focal length of the thermal lens. The relationship between the adjustment of the intra-cavity beam shaper and the mode size under different thermal lenses are concluded, and general method to actively control the modes contents by adjusting the intra-cavity beam shaper is introduced. The effectiveness and performance of active mode control with the intra-cavity beam shaper are verified by simulations of the output modes of resonators. It shows that the M2 factor is well maintained below 1.6 even the focal length of the thermal lens changes from 5m to 0.5m.