We describe a technique for the quick and simple assessment of doped optical materials for use as laser gain media. To demonstrate this technique, referred to as Rapid Thermo-Optical Assessment (RTOA), we analyze a set of ceramic and crystalline Yb:YAG samples. RTOA is based on Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing and thermal lensing to evaluate the media’s thermal response, giving a relative overa...

The paper discusses the processes that determine the parasitic heat generation and its distribution in the solid-state laser materials. It is inferred that the balance between the laser emission and heat generation is determined by the characteristics of the pumping system and by the partial efficiencies of the various steps of the flow of excitation between the energy levels of the laser mater...

A comprehensive model of ultrafast laser-induced plasma generation intended for coupling with pulse propagation simulations in transparent solids is introduced. It simultaneously accounts for the changing spectrum of a propagating ultrashort laser pulse while coupling to the evolution of the energy-resolved nonequilibrium free-carrier distribution. The presented results indicate that strong pul...

Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is one of the most successful direct solid sampling techniques for major, minor and trace element analysis. However, this technique still suffers from matrix dependent ablation characteristics, which makes quantification very difficult. Furthermore, the laser sampled material alters its composition from the sample to the de...

Solid state thin film lithium microbatteries fabricated by pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) are suggested. During deposition the following process parameters must be considered, which are laser energy and fluence, laser pulse duration, laser pulse frequency, target composition, background gasses, substrate temperature, target-substrate distance and orientation. The effects of the variations of the...

In high power solid-state-laser systems, one of the major problems is the thermal effect, which occurs in optically pumped laser materials. Heating of the laser medium causes thermal distortions, leading to degradation of beam quality. The main thermal effects in laser rods are thermally induced birefringence and thermal lensing effects. High efficiency, high power and good output beam quality ...

Solid-state lasers pumped by high-power two-dimensional arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) were investigated. Both end-pumping and side-pumping schemes of Nd:YAG lasers with high power kW-class 808 nm VCSEL pump modules were implemented. For one application 10 mJ blue laser pulses were obtained from a frequencydoubled actively Q-switched VCSEL-array dual side-pumped Nd:Y...

In this contribution we focus on laser frequency noise properties and their influence on the interferometric displacement measurements. A setup for measurement of laser frequency noise is proposed and tested together with simultaneous measurement of fluctuations in displacement in the Michelson interferometer. Several laser sources, including traditional He-Ne and solid-state lasers, and their ...

A novel scheme is presented for production of a thin (< 1 mm) uniform vapor layer over a large surface area (> 100 cm 2) by pulsed laser ablation of a solid surface. Instead of dispersing the laser energy uniformly over the surface, a modified Fabry-Perot interferometer is employed to concentrate the laser energy in very narrow closely-spaced concentric rings. This approach may be optimized to ...

-Heat and mass transfer at the nanosecond time scale and the nanometer length scale in pulsed laser fabrication of ultra-shallow p+-junctions is studied in this work. A new technique is developed to fabricate the ultra-shallow p÷-junctions with pulsed laser doping of crystalline silicon with a solid spin-onglass (SOG) dopant, through the nanosecond pulsed laser heating, melting, and boron mass ...