Abstract
Corrrection of birefringence induced effects (depolarization and bipolar focusing) was achieved in double-pass amplifiers using a Faraday rotator placed between the laser rod and the retroreflecting optic. A necessary condition was that each ray retraced its path within the amplifying medium. Retrace was limited by imperfect conjugate-beam fidelity and by nonreciprocal double-pass refractive-indices. We compared various retroreflectors: stimulated Brillouin scatter phase-conjugate-mirrors (PCMs), PCMs with relay lenses to image the rod principal plane onto the PCM entrance aperture (IPCMs), IPCMs with external, adaptively-adjusted, astigmatism-correcting cylindrical doublets, and all adaptive optics imaging variable-radius-mirrors (IVRMs). Results with flashlamp pumped, Nd:Cr:GSGG showed that average output power increased fivefold with a Faraday rotator plus complete nonlinear optics retroreflector package (IPCM+cylindrical zoom), and that this represented an 80% increase over the power achieved using just a PCM. Far better results were, however, achieved with an IVRM.
© 2001 Optical Society of America
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