Study of Effects of Wave Plate Orientation in Cross Porro Prism Diode Pumped Nd:yag Laser Resonators

In this paper the two different configurations of Porro prism resonators using Jones matrix method are studied theoretically. In one of the configurations the Q-switch is kept in the output arm while the gain medium is kept in feedback arm. In the other configuration, Q-switch and gain medium is kept in the feedback arm. The roundtrip Jones matrix for both the configurations are calculated and loss factor is plotted for rotation of wave plate and Porro prism. After that the position of Q-switch and wave plate is interchanged in both the configurations and the corresponding Jones matrix is again calculated. Jones matrix of all the resonator configurations is compared with each other. Such type of laser resonators is suitable for range finding and designation applications. KeywordsPorro prism; Nd:YAG laser; resonators; Jones matrix