Thermally induced birefringence in laser crystals limits the power and beam quality of high-power solid-state lasers and amplifiers. It is known, that 100-cut Nd:YAG crystals have less thermally induced depolarization that 111-cut ones [1]. Using a scheme with two rods, imaging telescope and a 90° rotator [2] allows to compensate for the depolarization. In contrast to 111-cut rod, pump heating ...

Fiber drawing from a 3D printed perform was recently discussed to go beyond the limitations of conventional optical fiber manufacturing in terms structure and materials. In this work, photosensitivity silica fibers femtosecond laser light, fabricated by printing preform, is investigated. The writing kinetics thermal performance Type II modifications are studied varying pulse energy investigatin...

Pulse shapes in a dispersive transparent material modulated by group-velocity dispersion, self-phase modulation, and self-focusing induced by a femtosecond laser light were observed directly with femtosecond timeresolved optical polarigraphy probing the induced instantaneous birefringence. The first observation of the state of femtosecond laser pulses about the interaction region inside the tra...

It is shown that the magnitude of nonlinear nonreciprocity, self-induced by counterpropagating laser beams, is related to the anisotropic properties of the nonlinear third-order susceptibility (resulting in the light-induced birefringence and gyrotropy) and therefore is sensitive to the mutual arrangement of polarization of both of the beams. The invariants of nonlinear wave equations suggest a...

Femtosecond laser pulses used in a regime below the ablation threshold have two noticeable effects on Fused Silica (a-SiO2): they locally increase the material refractive index and modify its HF etching selectivity. The nature of the structural changes induced by femtosecond laser pulses in fused silica is not fully understood. In this paper, we report on nanoindentation and birefringence measu...

We report on a simple method of locking a laser to a birefringent cavity using polarization spectroscopy. The birefringence of the resonator permits the simple extraction of an error signal by using one polarization state as a phase reference for another state. No modulation of the light or the resonator is required, reducing the complexity of the laser locking setup. This method of producing a...

We present a novel method of machining optical fiber surfaces with a CO₂ laser for use in Fiber-based Fabry-Perot Cavities (FFPCs). Previously FFPCs were prone to large birefringence and limited to relatively short cavity lengths (≤ 200 μm). These characteristics hinder their use in some applications such as cavity quantum electrodynamics with trapped ions. We optimized the laser machining proc...