Beam quality control technology for solid-state lasers based on thermal effects

Opt Express. 2023 Oct 23;31(22):36859-36871. doi: 10.1364/OE.503021.

Abstract

Thermal effects under high-power pumping significantly limit the laser beam quality. To address this, we developed an M2 simulation algorithm based on ray trajectory simulation and established a corresponding experimental platform. This approach optimized the M2 factor of pulsed lasers to 2.2 and output power of 25.9 W under a repetition rate of 10 kHz. The results revealed that under specific conditions, thermal effects, typically considered detrimental to beam quality, could significantly enhance it. Compared to other methods necessitating additional optical components, our strategy offers a streamlined and straightforward solution for beam quality control under high-power pumping conditions.