Suppression of FM-to-AM conversion in a broadband Nd:glass regenerative amplifier with an intracavity birefringent filter.

Abstract

In order to suppress the frequency modulation to amplitude modulation (FM-to-AM) conversion induced by a Nd:glass regenerative laser amplifier, a birefringent quartz crystal was designed by theoretical simulation and inserted into the regenerative amplifier. A broadband Nd:glass regenerative laser amplifier with a flattop region of ∼3.7 nm in the gain spectrum was developed. An all-fiber front-end system was used to generate a 2 ns shaped pulse with a spectral width of ∼0.5 nm, which was broadened by a two-stage phase modulator. Then, the laser pulse was amplified by a spectral-broadened regenerative amplifier. The amplified output temporal waveform modulation depth was reduced from a maximum of 47.7% to 17.3% at a center wavelength of 1053.328 nm. The experimental results show that the FM-to-AM conversion can be effectively suppressed in the spectral-broadened Nd:glass regenerative laser amplifier, which indicates that it has potential application as a preamplifier of large-scale laser facilities.