高光束质量、高功率稳定性激光器的设计及实验研究

Design and experimental study on high quality beam and high stability power of laser

高光束质量、高功率稳定性激光器在激光加工、激光测量等领域具有广泛的用途.为了实现激光器腔内光斑聚焦同时减少色散和体积,人们常常将曲面反射镜用在激光谐振腔中,但光束倾斜入射到曲面反射镜往往会引起像散,从而导致光斑质量恶化,并降低激光器的性能.另一方面,在高功率激光器或超短脉冲激光器中,激光增益介质热透镜焦距的起伏,是导致激光输出功率波动的主要原因之一.针对激光器的像散和功率波动这两个问题,本文提出了一套简单高效的解决方案,在考虑像散补偿和热透镜效应的基础上,基于传播变换圆理论,首次提出一种可实现高光束质量、高功率稳定性激光器谐振腔的设计方法,并对采用该方法所设计出的超短脉冲激光器进行理论与实验研究.研究结果表明,利用该方法设计的激光谐振腔,两端臂像散能够完全被补偿,实验上实现了基模高斯光束输出;当激光晶体热透镜焦距改变时,该方法所设计出的激光谐振腔内各关键位置光斑半径的变化,显著地小于普通谐振腔,在相同外界条件下,其输出激光功率稳定性明显优于普通激光器.

High-performance lasers with high-quality beam laser and high-stability power are widely used for laser machining, laser precision measuring, etc. Reflection curved mirrors are widely used in lasers to provide several small intracavity focal spots and reduce the dispersion and volume of the laser. The primary disadvantage of using reflection curved mirrors in folded resonators is that relatively large angles of incidence deform the circular transverse pattern of the output beam and limit laser performance. In addition, in high power lasers or ultra short pulse lasers, the gain medium thermal lens focal length fluctuation is the primary cause of the instability of laser output power. This paper focuses on beam quality and power stability of laser, and an effective method of solving the two problems, i.e., astigmatism and instability power of laser, is presented. The laser resonator with high-quality laser beam and high-stability power is very easy and intuitive to design by this method, in which the resonator transform circle graphic theory is used and the thermal lens and astigmatism compensation is taken into account. The theoretical investigation shows that the astigmatism in two terminal arms of the folded laser resonator can be successfully eliminated by using this method, and the experimental measurements of the pattern of the laser output beam show that the deformations of spot intensity profiles in the two terminal arms can be simultaneously compensated for completely in the cavity, which is in good agreement with the analytical prediction. When the focal length of the laser crystal thermal lens varies, the variations of radii of spots not only at some key position, but also at all locations of the laser resonance designed by this method, are overtly smaller than the variation of the normal resonant cavity. The stability of the output laser power of the laser is better than that of a universal laser resonator under the same external conditions.