Thermo-Optical Self-Compensated Amplifiers for High-Power Laser Resonators

摘要

Thermally induced optical effects can be exploited to generate adaptive optical devices such as self adjusting lenses. A liquid or gel layer sandwiched between two laser rods can sellf-adaptively compensate for the thermal lenses in the laser rods and therefore significantly increase the power range and the output beam quality of high-power lasers. Thermo-optically self-compensating amplifiers (TOSCA) and their influence on optical resonators are discussed.