Enhancement of p-polarized output power in long pulse single rod Nd:YAG laser using a tilted 90° quartz rotator

We report a study on the enhancement of linearly p-polarized output power in long pulse (2-20 ms) multimode operation of single rod Nd:YAG laser. Laser resonator was designed using a simple optical scheme with a tilted 90° quartz rotator and a re-entering feedback mirror placed at appropriate location. A p-polarized average output power of 215 W has been achieved with a slope efficiency of 4.5%, which is on higher side for a typical long pulse single rod Nd:YAG laser system. It has been verified experimentally that the depolarization losses can be reduced significantly from a value of ~34% to ~9%. Further, this scheme has resulted in a significant enhancement (more than 80%) of p-polarized output power as compared to placing a polarizer in the resonator. This long pulse p-polarized laser will be useful in various material processing applications and nonlinear frequency conversions.