Correction of walk-off-induced wavefront distortion for continuous-wave laser**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 91436103) and Research Programme of National University of Defense Technology, China (Grant No. JC15-02-03).

Abstract

We theoretically and experimentally investigate the wave front distortion in critically phase-matched continuous-wave (CW) second harmonic generation (SHG). Due to the walk-off effect in the nonlinear crystal, the generated second harmonic is extremely elliptical and quite non-Gaussian, which causes a very low matching and coupling efficiency in experiment. Cylindrical lenses and walk-off compensating crystals are adopted to correct distorted wave fronts, and obtain a good TEM00 mode efficiently. Theoretically, we simulate the correction effect of 266-nm laser generated with SHG. The experiment results accord well with the theoretical simulation and an above 80% TEM00 component is obtained for 266-nm continuous-wave laser with a 4.8°-walk-off angle in beta barium borate (BBO) crystal.