Thermal lensing study based on the heat transfer of diode-pumped Yb³⁺:Y₂SiO₅ lasers

¹ Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optics and Photonic Devices, College of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, 250014, P.R. China
² Key Laboratory of Transparent and Opto-functional Inorganic Materials, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201800, P.R. China

Corresponding author: jieliu@sdnu.edu.cn

Received: 10 December 2010
Revised: 16 January 2011
Accepted: 20 January 2011
Published online: 13 April 2011

Abstract

Based on the features of diode-pumped Yb³⁺:Y₂SiO₅ (Yb:YSO) lasers, a thermal model was established. According to the latest reports and measurements on thermal parameters, and further considering the heat transfer on side surface, thermal lensing effect of Yb:YSO was studied for the first time to our knowledge. Under the pump power of 17 W, the maximum temperature (488.4 °C) and the maximum distortion (1.24 μm) were obtained by solving Poisson equation using finite difference method. Moreover, thermal lens focal length was measured through a plane-plane cavity. All the results demonstrate that the theoretical result will be closer to the reality if we take the heat transfer on side surfaces into account.