Characterization of a distortion-corrected Nd:YAG laser with aself-conjugating loop geometry

摘要

A detailed experimental and theoretical characterization of anself-adaptive solid-state laser is presented. The system uses ansaturable gain medium (Nd:YAG amplifier) as the adaptive element in annexternally injected self-intersecting loop geometry. We demonstratenenergy output >300 mJ, high energy reflectivity >104,nlow input energy threshold of ~5 ΜJ, and phase-conjugate propertiesnof the system that compensate for both intracavity and extracavity phasendistortions. The spatial output beam size is compared to a Gaussian modenanalysis based on ABCD ray transfer matrices. The temporal, spectral,nenergy, and threshold characteristics are compared to one-dimensionalnanalytical and transient numerical simulations