Great reduction of thermally-induced-birefringence effect in highly Nd{sup}(3+)-doped YAG ceramics by laser oscillation

摘要

Nd:YAG ceramics are promising candidates for high-power and high-efficient microchip laser materials because highly transparent and highly Nd{sup}(3+)-doped samples are available with superior thermomechanical properties.1 We have investigated thermally-induced-birefringence effect in Nd:YAG ceramics and found that depolarization loss of highly Nd{sup}(3+)-doped ceramics is much larger than that of conventional Nd:YAG single crystals even at the same absorbed pump power under non-lasing condition. In this paper, however, we report that drastic reduction of depolarization loss is realized in highly Nd{sup}(3+)-doped YAG ceramics by laser oscillation.