Thermo-optic effects affecting the high pump power end pumped solid state lasers: Modeling and analysis

A complete solution of the thermal effect for continuous wave laser diode array fiber coupled high pump power end pumped actively solid state laser is presented. In this paper, the thermal loading resulted from energy transfer up-conversion effect for laser operated under different pulse repetition frequency has been taken into account in the overall thermal effects. The thermal loading transfer the absorbed pump power into non-uniform temperature distribution in the laser rod, and thus results in thermal strain, thermal stress, thermal dispersion of index, and thermally induced diffraction losses. For a practical laser cavity configuration containing the internal optical elements, we use spherical aberration theory to give a better explanation of experimental results via calculating diffraction losses quantitatively. According to analysis of thermal focal length experimental data, the results show that our calculated value of thermal loading under fixed Nd3+ doped concentration laser crystal is not a constant but a function of pump power instead. The theoretical predicted curve of thermal focal length based on our model is in good agreement with experimental measurements. At low pump power, the thermal loading is a linear function varying with pump power, but it begins to saturate at pump powers exceeding 6 W. This phenomenon is consistent with our physical intuitions.