1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optically pumped solid-state laser amplifiers. More specifically, the present invention relates to a grating method and apparatus embodiment for reducing or eliminating parasitic oscillations (e.g., amplified spontaneous emission (ASE)) in solid state laser materials.
2. Description of Related Art
Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) strongly impacts performance and efficiency of high-power laser systems. ASE is produced when excited ions in the laser gain medium spontaneously emit light that is amplified by other excited ions. ASE increases the overall decay rate of excited ions and thereby decreases gain and stored energy that is available for amplifying the laser beam. ASE is emitted at all angles within the volume of the gain medium. Most of it is trapped by total internal reflection (TIR), and bounces back and forth between the faces of the gain medium before reaching the periphery. Background information on such deleterious ASE and parasitic oscillation effects can be found in “Fluorescence Amplification and Parasitic Oscillation Limitations in Disk Lasers”, by J. B. Trenholme, NRL Memorandum Rep. 2480, July, 1972; J. E. Swain, et al., J. Appl. Phys., 40, p. 3973 (1969); and J. M. McMahon et al., IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE-9, p. 992 (1973)).
Much development has gone into methods and materials that are applied to the periphery of the gain medium to out-couple light that reaches this edge (i.e. edge cladding background). However, new solutions are required to allow out-coupling of this light at the faces of the gain media, before it reaches the periphery, in order to allow for optimum energy extraction, larger gain media apertures, and fewer overall gain media for a given energy requirement. In LLNL's NIF laser for example, modeling shows that gain coefficients and stored energy density would be ˜44% greater without ASE. If ASE could be defeated, corresponding fewer laser slabs would be needed to provide the necessary gain, resulting in significant cost savings. Further, the resulting higher gain per slab would enable beamlines to operate at higher intensities without exceeding non-linear phase shift limits.
Another problem concerning slab-geometry laser gain media is the need for higher coupling efficiency of diode pump light into them. For many solid-state lasers, the amplifying slabs or disks absorb only a fraction of the incident pump light due to the limited path length of pump light through the slabs.
In principle, pump-light absorption can be increased by increasing the density of absorbing ions or by increasing the thickness of the laser medium. However, ion density is often limited by material fabrication issues or other factors, such as “concentration quenching” that occurs with Nd3+ ions. Slab thickness is often limited by thermal issues. These limitations can put undesirable constraints on slab and amplifier design and performance.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method for suppressing ASE in a high average power solid-state laser, that includes providing one or more laser gain media and integrating one or more non-planar profiles with the one or more of the laser gain media so as to efficiently extract a desired spectral range, efficiently couple a predetermined optical pump source and out-couple amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) for each said laser gain media.
Another aspect of the present invention is directed to an apparatus having gain media configured with one or more non-planar profiles for suppressing ASE while efficiently coupling pump light and transmitting a desired extraction beam.
Suppression of gain clamping resulting from amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) has enormous potential benefits to large-aperture solid-state laser systems (e.g., systems of up to about 100 kW) by allowing more efficient coupling of pump light to the amplified light. Accordingly, fewer and thinner gain media slabs required for the same gain with a lower B-integral and larger apertures that are now fundamentally limited by ASE now become possible, which also allows for larger aperture slabs.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated into and form a part of the disclosure, illustrate an embodiment of the invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.
a) illustrates a basic example embodiment of a grating integrated to a laser gain media.
b) illustrates the coupling of ASE out of a laser slab by either direct transmission or by reflecting light back through the slab at an angle smaller than the TIR angle.
a) shows example methods of producing gratings of the present invention.
b) shows example methods of producing gratings of the present invention.
a) illustrates a multilayer dielectric structure for out-coupling ASE radiation of a laser gain media while providing high-efficiency transmission of the pump and extraction beams.
b) illustrates an optimized design of
c) illustrates a top down view representative of the structure illustrated in
d) illustrates a ton down view representative of a two-dimensional grating structure.
General Description
Optical Gratings
The basic geometric properties of any optical grating follow from the grating equation (Equation 1) that expresses the condition for constructive interference from successive periodic elements on a surface and that relates the incidence angle θi, the diffracted angle θm for order m, and the ratio of the wavelength λ to groove spacing d:
sin θm=sin θi+mλ/d. (1)
For a reflection grating used in a first-order Littrow mount (m=−1), the angle of incidence is fixed by the condition sin θi=λ/2d. Only specular reflection (m=0) and evanescent orders occur when λ/d>2, whereas, for the range 2>λ/d>2/3, two propagating orders occur (m=0 and retro-diffraction m=−1).
As opposed to mirrors or flat reflective surfaces wherein only the index of refraction and absorption of the layer(s) determine the reflectivity, the efficiency (i.e., the distribution of energy among the various orders) of a grating additionally depends upon the wavelength and the polarization of incident light, the characteristics of the grating profile, details of the deposition method, and amount of material to be deposited.
ASE and Parasitic Oscillations
During optical pumping, some of the excited dopant atoms spontaneously decay, emitting photons at the frequency of a designed laser transition. Such photons can be emitted at all angles. Many of these rays are emitted at angles greater than or equal to the critical angle for total internal reflection (TIR) so as to be trapped between a gain media's disk faces and amplified (i.e., ASE) as they travel through the laser gain media. In high average power disk amplifiers in particular, ASE emitted beyond the TIR angle is totally reflected back into the disk. If the gain in traversing the disk exceeds the edge losses then the process can proceed indefinitely. This effect is referred to as a parasitic oscillation. Importantly, such effects become more likely to occur as the aperture is increased.
In order to operate efficiently, a laser apparatus/system must have a certain minimum product of the gain coefficient go [1/cm] and the length over which that gain is experienced L [cm], leading to a fundamental laser figure of merit, the dimensionless product goL. One typically tries to achieve a goL of over 2 in the beam direction in order to get efficient lasing operation. ASE photons undergoing amplification robs some of the stored lasing energy in the beam direction, and thus creates a deleterious effect with respect to the output power and is a serious concern in all large aperture lasers. Since the gain coefficient is given by the strength of the pumping, a laser gain disk or slab which is too large has more ASE losses than one which has the same gain coefficient go, but is smaller in the dimension L.
Laser glass slabs configured for the national ignition facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories (LLNL), for example, traps about 75% of the isotropically emitted ASE by total internal reflections. The average gain coefficient and available stored energy for NIF slabs are about 44% greater without ASE. ASE also causes a 2:1 center-to-edge gain rolloff in the main amplifier system. The situation is even worse with gain media having higher refractive indices, such as crystals and ceramic slabs. With the recent advent of large-aperture ceramic slabs as a gain medium, the limit on aperture size for high-energy, high average-power lasers is now defined by gain clamping of ASE, not the availability of large slabs.
Accordingly, the present invention addresses two problems that impact the design and performance of solid-state commercial and industrial lasers, such as the NIF facility at LLNL. The first problem is the need for higher coupling efficiency of diode pump light into solid-state laser gain media. For many solid-state lasers, the amplifying slabs (or disks or rods) absorb only a fraction of the incident pump light. In principle, pump-light absorption efficiency can be increased by increasing the density of absorbing ions or by increasing the thickness of the laser medium. However, ion density is often limited by material fabrication issues or by other factors, such as interactions between ions that can reduce gain and stored energy (e.g., the “concentration quenching” that occurs with Nd3+ ions). In many applications, thickness is limited by the need to achieve adequate cooling rates so that the laser can be fired at a specified repetition rate. A solution used in the Mercury laser at LLNL is to stack relatively thin laser slabs one closely behind another, so that pump light from diodes passes through up to seven laser slabs. While this solution works for Mercury, it has put stringent demands on conditioning of the diode pump light to ensure uniform and efficient pumping, for which a large reflecting duct has proven necessary.
The second problem addressed by the present invention is ASE, which strongly impacts performance and efficiency of high-power solid-state lasers. ASE, as discussed in some detail above, increases the overall decay rate of excited ions and thereby decreases gain and stored energy available for amplifying the laser beam. In the NIF laser, modeling shows that gain coefficients and stored energy density are about 44% greater without ASE. Therefore, suppression of ASE results in fewer expensive slabs to meet energy specifications. Secondary problems caused by low pump-light coupling efficiency and by ASE are relatively low gain coefficients and stored energy density in gain media. In turn, such problems cause larger accumulated non-linear phase shifts (known as “delta-B” and “sigma-B”) that degrade the laser beam and which are mitigated by the use of long spatial filters, which partially restore beam quality. These long spatial filters increase space requirements and cost of high-power laser systems.
Currently, the most effective method of limiting ASE effects in laser slabs and disks is by limiting their size as suggested to above. As a rule of thumb, the product of the average gain coefficient multiplied by the longest dimension of a laser slab or disk is beneficially less than about 4.5. This limit on slab or disk size limits the size of the laser beam, and in turn the energy that can be produced per beam. The limit on beam energy renders some laser applications impossible or impractical. For other applications, many more laser beams need to be used to meet an energy requirement, with resulting increase in cost.
The present invention is directed to solving the problems, as described above, by for example, cutting, milling, etching or depositing (e.g., depositing one or more dielectric layers) a periodic structure on one or more surfaces (e.g., the faces or peripheral edges) of a laser gain media (laser slab or disk or rod) arranged in predetermined amplifier geometries (e.g., zig zag, Brewster configurations etc.).
Such arrangements prevent some fraction of the ASE emitted at large angles to be trapped by total internal reflection (TIR). Just as importantly, such grating structures, as disclosed herein, are also designed to transmit the amplified beam while coupling the predetermined pump wavelength with high efficiency with a benefit of withstanding high peak and average power with no absorption of the laser or pump light. Furthermore, the configured structures of the present invention are manufacturable using existing materials and processing technologies as known to those of ordinary skill in the art.
Specific Description
The present invention thus utilizes gratings (in one-dimensional or two-dimensional (e.g., a cross-grating) configurations) in integrated arrangements with laser gain media as a beneficial means to suppress ASE, efficiently couple pump light, while transmitting a predetermined amplified beam in a high average power laser apparatus/system(s). Such beneficial laser gain media capable of being configured with such gratings of the present invention include, but are not limited to, neodymium gadolinium gallium garnet (Nd:GGG or “GGG” for short), neodymium doped yttrium aluminum Garnet (Nd:YAG), ytterbium doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Yb:YAG), Ti:Sapphire (Ti:Al2O3), ruby (Cr2O3), alexandrite (BeAl2O4:Cr3+), ceramics (e.g., ceramic Nd:YAG), ytterbium-doped strontium-fluorapatite (Yb:S-FAP), Neodymium Doped Yttrium Orthvanadate (Nd:YVO4), and Erbium doped Yttrium Lithium Fluoride (Er:YLF), etc., or any laser gain media capable of operating within the spirit and scope of the present invention.
In addition, laser gain media configured, for example, as a disk or slab, can each have a thickness ranging approximately from about 1 mm to about 40 mm with transverse dimensions ranging from about 10 mm×10 mm to about 400 mm×400 mm. Moreover, the disks or slabs, can be cut into any shape, such as, but not limited to, rectangles or polygonal shapes, squares, ellipses, etc.
Turning back to the drawings,
The grating designs of the present invention enable the width of the diffracted beam width to be smaller than the incident beam, leading to the overlap of reflected and incident pump beams, which beneficially increases the intensity of pump light inside the slab by many times its value for the incident pump beam. Such a pump-light intensification has significant potential for enhancing the performance of quasi-three-level lasers, such as the holmium laser, which requires bleaching of the ground state for efficient operation. Holmium lasers operate at eye-safe wavelengths and are useful for many applications. Currently, however, holmium lasers must be cryogenically cooled for efficient operation. With the present invention, cooling requirements are relaxed or perhaps eliminated.
Many variant embodiments are possible for the grating applications as disclosed herein. For example, gratings might be placed on both sides of the laser slab, with pump light incident on both sides. Gratings might also be used in transmission rather than in reflection, so that the pump beam is diffracted at a large angle just as it enters the slab. Gratings can also be used in other geometries, such as laser disks and rods. As another beneficial embodiment, a grating 10, as shown in
b) illustrates another example embodiment of how a grating as disclosed herein can be used to couple ASE out of a laser slab by either direct transmission or by reflecting light back through the slab at an angle smaller than the TIR angle. By depositing a grating via, for example, by dielectric coating methods or by imbedding, e.g., by etching a predetermined groove pattern just below the surface, on or into the gain material and designed with transmission orders at angles smaller than the TIR angle, such predetermined orders can be substantially transmitted at a laser gain media slab surface. Since most ASE rays encounter slab surfaces many times before attaining harmful fluence levels, transmission and reflectance losses at each encounter with the grating need not be near unity for significant reduction in ASE to occur. Accordingly, a grating 24, as shown in
c) illustrates an example system application of the present invention similar to the NIF architecture at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. Such an example arrangement illustrates the capability of double-sided diode pumping 12 (shown as solid arrows) of one or more amplifiers 14 configured in a Brewster arrangement and having integrated gratings 10 to enable suppression of ASE, efficient coupling of the pump light 12 while extracting a desired amplified beam 16 (shown as a dashed arrow) directed along a predetermined path (e.g., a zig-zag arrangement or a direct path as shown in
As another beneficial arrangement, an anti-reflection coating (e.g., 22, as shown in
a) and 3(b) shows example illustrations of producing gratings of the present invention. As shown in
As an even more beneficial example embodiment, such gratings can be fabricated entirely by controlled deposition techniques as detailed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,436, titled, “Multilayer dielectric Diffraction Gratings,” issued May 25, 1999 to Perry et al, assigned to the instant assignee and incorporated by reference in its entirety. The multilayer stack is designed for use with the top grating layer and is produced on a predetermined surface of a laser gain media by any conventional coating method including, but not limited to: electron beam evaporation, chemical vapor deposition, and molecular beam epitaxy.
Subsequently, a free standing deposition mask is then produced and placed above the multilayer dielectric stack and a grating is formed by directional evaporation of the dielectric grating material through the mask. The open regions of the mask allow dielectric material to flow through the mask and deposit on top of the multilayer stack and the closed regions of the mask block the deposition. The mask is then removed by chemical, plasma or physical means leaving a completed grating on a predetermined laser gain media substrate. The result is a multilayer dielectric grating where the groove structure is in the top layer. Such dielectric multilayer gratings are generally a multilayer oxide stack which often include alternating layers of high and low index dielectric materials (e.g., HfO2, SiO2, Ta2O4-5, Sc2O3, ZrO2, TiO2, Al2O3, MgF2, CaF2, ThF4, ZnS, ZnSe, etc.) which exhibit low absorption at a desired transition wavelength. By adjusting the design of the dielectric multilayer coating and/or the grating layer, the distribution of energy between the reflected, transmitted and diffracted beams can be arbitrarily controlled.
a) illustrates another example beneficial multilayer dielectric structure for out-coupling ASE radiation of a laser gain media while providing high-efficiency transmission of the pump and extraction beams. As shown in
As detailed above in the general description section, diffraction from such a grating structure is governed by the grating equation: sin θm=sin θi+mλ/d, where θm is the diffracted angle, θi is the incident angle of the incoming beam, λ is the extraction beam wavelength, m is the diffracted order and d is the grating period. For this application, the period d must be such that p<λ, often less than about λ/2. This assures that only m=0 transmission is allowed by the grating equation for the extraction beam entering the structure at near-normal incidence (i.e. higher order transmissions and reflections are evanescent).
The height and duty cycle (ratio of linewidth to period) of the layers that make up the grating are optimized to simultaneously satisfy the following criteria:
b) illustrates an optimized design of
Features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description. Applicants are providing this description, which includes drawings and examples of specific embodiments, to give a broad representation of the invention. Various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this description and by practice of the invention. The scope of the invention is not intended to be limited to the particular forms disclosed and the invention covers all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the claims.
The United States Government has rights in this invention pursuant to Contract No. W-7405-ENG-48 between the United States Department of Energy and the University of California for the operation of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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