Abstract
Diode end-pumping schemes offer the advantages of high pump efficiency and good mode selection for single-mode operation of solid-state lasers. This form of pumping allows the pump energy to be deposited into the central region of the rod, thus exciting the lowest optical transverse mode (in contrast to side pumping, which illuminates the entire rod and tends to excite multiple modes). As a consequence of this pump transverse nonuinformity, the heating distribution resulting from quantum inefficiencies is also nonuniform. Uniform heating distributions lead to parabolic temperature and phase error profiles;1 such phase errors are easily corrected with standard optical components. With end-pumping, however, the temperature and optical phase profiles, while still parabolic within the pumped region (assuming uniform pumping within this region), are more complex (typically logarithmic) in the guard band surrounding the pumped region.2
© 1992 Optical Society of America
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