Laser cavities

To make an oscillator from an amplifier requires, in the language of electronics, positive feedback. In lasers this is provided by the active medium being between two mirrors, both of them highly reflecting but one rather less so in order to allow some of the stimulated radiation to leak out and form the laser beam. The region bounded by the mirrors is called the laser cavity. Various mirror systems are used but that shown in Figure 9.1, consisting of... 

Figure 9.1 Laser cavity with two plane mirrors...

Figure 9.4 Use of Pockels cell (PC) in a laser cavity to produce 0-switchmg...

One of the mirrors forming the laser cavity is as close to 100% reflecting as possible (99.5%) the other is coated to allow 1% of the radiation to emerge as the laser beam. 

Usually the laser cavity consists of one mirror that is almost 100% reflecting and one mirror that is partially reflecting and partially transmitting to allow emission of some of the light as the useful output of the laser. 

Spatial Profiles. The cross sections of laser beams have certain weU-defined spatial profiles called transverse modes. The word mode in this sense should not be confused with the same word as used to discuss the spectral Hnewidth of lasers. Transverse modes represent configurations of the electromagnetic field determined by the boundary conditions in the laser cavity. A fiiU description of the transverse modes requires the use of orthogonal polynomials. 

One variation in dye laser constmction is the ring dye laser. The laser cavity is a reentrant system, so that the laser light can circulate in a closed loop. The ring stmcture provides a high degree of stabiUty and a narrow spectral width. The spectral width of a conventional dye laser on the order of 40 GH2 is narrowed to a value as small as a few MH2. Such systems offer very high resolution in spectroscopic appHcations. 

The 6 Nd YAG lasers pump the DM0, preamplifier and power amplifier (Fig. 19, Friedman et al., 1998). The YAG lasers are built from commercially available flashlamp/laser rod assemblies, acousto-optic Q-switches and frequency doubling crystals (LBO and KTP). Most of the mirror mounts and crystal holders are commercial. Nd YAGs are frequency doubled to 532 nm using a nonlinear crystal. The Nd YAG rod and nonlinear crystal are both in the pump laser cavity to provide efficient frequency conversion. The 532 nm light is coupled out through a dichroic and fed to multimode fibers which transport the light to the DM0 and amplifier dye cells. 

The pump lasers were designed and built at LLNL. Two laser cavity configurations are employed. Two "L" shaped cavities run at the full system repetition rate of 26 kHz, producing 40-50 W per laser. They pump the DM0 and preamplifier dye cells. Four "Z" cavity lasers run at 13 kHz, each producing between 60-80 W. They are interleaved in the power amplifier dye cell to produce an effective 26 kHz repetition rate. Flashlamps were used to pump the frequency-doubled YAG lasers as diode-pumps were much more expensive at the time the Keck LGS was designed. In addition, high wavefront quality is not required... 

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