Gain media phase conjugators and self-adaptive solid-state lasers

Abstract

A presentation is made of recent work in 3-D saturable gain-gratings, produced by spatial hole-burning, as efficient, externally programmable and/or self-adaptive diffractive optical elements for application in gain-media phase conjugators and as a technology for versatile adaptive spatial, spectral, and Q-switching control of high-gain solid-state lasers. Description is to be mainly made of gain-gratings written by spatial hole-burning when coherent beams, at the lasing wavelength, interfere in a gain medium. Such 3-D gain gratings, which have a persistence for the upper-state lifetime of the gain medium, can be considered as volume gain holograms and the application of these adaptive grating devices can be considered as a type of dynamic "gain holography."