Abstract
Keywords
1 Introduction
High-power long-wave infrared laser sources, operating most prominently in the region
Since zinc germanium phosphide (
The most challenging component of the system is the efficient
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In this paper, we demonstrated a high-power long-wave infrared laser based on a polarization beam coupling technique. An average output power of 7.0 W was achieved at a maximum available pump power of 107.6 W, corresponding to an optical-to-optical conversion of 6.5%. This is a feasible method to increase the output power of long-wave infrared lasers without any damage.
2 Working principle
Zinc germanium phosphide was selected for the long-wave laser in our experiment because of its excellent physical properties. The absorption coefficient of the ZGP crystal (School of Chemical Engineering & Technology, HIT) at
According to Equation (
As shown in Figure
Figure
The linear resonator consists of two flat mirrors M7 (coating with high transmittance at
Figure
In the OPO, ZGP1 and ZGP2, with a dimension of
Due to the walk-off effect in the nonlinear crystal, a beam coincidence system was used to separate and overlap the signal and the idler from the OPO before focusing into the OPA crystal. The system consists of four plane
Obviously, the idler beam (wavelength above
Besides the OPA, another feasible method to increase the output power or energy of a far-infrared laser is to employ a polarization beam coupling technique since the parametric beams are all polarized. Because of the low coating damage threshold
3 Results and discussion
In the above configuration, as shown in Figure
In the above system, as shown in Figure
After passing through or being reflected from the thin polarizer, the coupling output power from the polarizer was up to 7.0 W, as shown in Figure
The output spectrum of the
To evaluate the beam quality of the
4 Conclusion
In this paper, the scheme to increase output power is suitable for long-wave infrared lasers since the signal beam of the ring OPO is the ideal pumping source for a cascaded OPA laser and the long-wave signal beam can reduce the quantum loss of the OPA. If the two arms of the coupling system are all ring OPOs and cascaded OPAs, the output power and conversion efficiency from
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