A development of red internal mirror He-Ne lasers with near critical concave-convex stable resonators

Book · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:529706

Xianshu, Li; Yuchuan, Chen; Taoyu, Li; Yongni, Wang; Yongjun, He; Yangqiu, Gao; Huiying, Cao ^[1]; Shousong, Deng ^[2]

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1. Zhongshan Univ., Guangzhou (China). Dept. of Physics
2. Guangzhou Inst. of Laser Application (China)

Basic properties of the concave-convex stable resonator (CCSR) with cavity parameter g{sub 1}g{sub 2} near to 1 are discussed in the infinite aperture approximation. The field distributions and diffraction losses of the low order transverse modes of related resonators with finite aperture are analyzed numerically. The stability of the output power of the lasers with CCSR are studied experimentally. The authors have made a total of 120 red internal mirror He-Ne lasers with CCSR (g{sub 1}g{sub 2} {ge} 0.90) whose cavity lengths are approximately 63 cm and the effective lengths of discharge tubes are about 52 cm. Most of the lasers operate with TEM{sub 00} stably, and the highest output power is 30 mw. The laser beam waist lies outside the resonator at a distance of 1.0m from the convex mirror, and the beam divergence is 0.45mrad. For the TEM{sub 00} lasers operate normally, the misalignment angle of the resonator mirrors must be less than 10{sup {minus}5} rad. The following facts are of particular value. (1) When the resonant frequency spacing between two successive transverse modes of a CCSR {Delta}{nu} is so small that its effect on the competition among transverse modes in the lasers with the CCSR can be negligible, such a CCSR is called near critical CCSR (NCSR). It is observed that even if the round trip total loss (including the transmission loss and so on) of TEM{sub 01} is only about 0.2 round trip small signal gain of the laser, and the round trip diffraction loss of TEM{sub 00} is only about 0.001, still the laser with the NCSR operate with pure TEM{sub 00} stably. It is clear that the mode competition in a laser with NCSR is extraordinarily favorable for TEM{sub 00}. (2) While the TEM{sub 00} lasers operate normally, the center frequency of every longitudinal mode is stable, its drift per hour is less than 0.1 longitudinal mode spacing ({approx}2.4 {times} 10{sup 7} Hz). (3) The superradiant transition at 3.30 {micro}m is suppressed.

• OSTI ID: 529706
• Report Number(s): CONF-9611124--; ISBN 0-8194-2290-8
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FREQUENCY CONTROL
HELIUM-NEON LASERS
LASER CAVITIES
LASER MIRRORS
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
RESONATORS
STABILITY
THEORETICAL DATA