Study On Photonic Materials Solid-state Laser

Photonic material is characterized by rich variety, such as nonlinear optics material, lasermaterial, semiconductor optical material and so on. All of these photonic materials haveexcellent optical properties, and have extensive applications in nonlinear optics, solid-statelaser, integrated optics and semiconductor optics. Silicon carbide (SiC) and lithiumniobate (LiNbO3) are typical photonic materials. SiC has high thermal conductivity, aswell as processes excellent optical properties in mid-infrared band. Due to these properties,SiC can be adopted as heat sink material in solid-state laser, and as laser transmissionwindow. It can also give a new direction for the future development of laser. LiNbO3crystal doped with rare-earth ions can generate laser oscillation and amplification, inwhich laser property, nonlinear optics property and electro-optics effect can be integratedwithin just one crystal. It can be well used in solid-state laser, integrated optics andnonlinear optics. Therefore, the study on SiC and LiNbO3in the application of solid-statelaser can realize integrated and compact laser.In the first section, we introduce the SiC crystal, LiNbO3crystal and diamond, whichare typical high refractive optical materials, including physical, thermal and opticalproperties. In the second part of this section, we introduce the research status andapplication situation in solid-state laser in detail. Furthermore, we focus on the excellentmanagement which is achieved depending on the SiC, as well as the important function ofLiNbO3crystal doped with rare-earth ions in solid-state laser.In the second section, we study the thermal effect and laser performance of Nd:YVO4slab laser cooled by air, which is clamped by two SiC claddings. By numerical simulation, we analyze the temperature distributions and thermal induced stress distributions in laseractive slab and SiC claddings. The numerical simulation results show that the excellentthermal management can be gotten by utilizing the SiC slabs as heat sink claddings, itplays fundamental roles in laser operation. In experiment, we get100W class laser outputpower. It demonstrates that silicon carbide plays important role in thermal management,and can be used in solid-state laser engineering.In the third section, we design a compact split disk laser with SiC wafer and Nd:YVO4disks, and research the laser performance without any active cooling. The composite ofSiC wafer and Nd:YVO4disks are bonded via liquid capillarity. By numerical simulation,we analyze the firmness of the composite under different conditions, and the temperatureand thermal induced stress distributions in different region of the composite. Thenumerical simulation results show that the bonding layer of composite is very firm duringlaser operation. Experimentally, the results show that the numerical simulations areaccurate and in a good agreement with the numerical thermal analysis. Stable laser outputpower is obtained in experiment, and an efficient and compact self-cooling laser can berealized by this novel design.In the fourth section, we research the growth of Tm,Mg:LiNbO3crystal with highTm3+ions doping concentration, as well as the absorption spectrum and fluorescenceemission spectrum of the crystal. It is found that the Tm,Mg:LiNbO3crystal has broaderfluorescence emission spectrum. Comparing with other Tm3+-doped laser active crystal,Tm,Mg:LiNbO3crystal has bigger stimulated emission cross section. Experimentally, weobtain short2micron output laser, and realize multi-wavelength laser operation by tuningexperiment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to achieve watt-level laseroperation in Tm,Mg:LiNbO3crystal and the output power is four orders of magnitudehigher than that previously reported in Tm-doped LiNbO3crystal. The output laser hasexcellent beam quality. In addition, quantitative analysis about the long-termphotorefractive effect is also provided, no photorefractive effect appear in laser experiment.