Nonlinear absorption and refraction effect on thermal lensing of solid-state laserrods

Abstract

In this work, the effect of nonlinear absorption and refraction on thermal lensing of an end-pumped solid-state laser rod is investigated. At high input pump powers and on the focused region of thermal lensing, nonlinear responses of the active medium will be important. By considering the nonlinear absorption and refraction, the intensity distribution inside the rod is obtained. A convergence lens models the intensity dependency of the refractive index. By modeling of the laser rod with some contributed effective lenses, the stability condition of a typical laser resonator is investigated.