Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications Edited by Mikhail Grishin Intech IV Published by Intech Intech Olajnica 19/2, 32000 Vukovar, Croatia Abstracting and non-profit use of the material is permitted with credit to the source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. Publisher assumes no responsibility liability for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained inside. After this work has been published by the Intech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are an author or editor, and the make other personal use of the work. © 2010 Intech Free online edition of this book you can find under www.sciyo.com Additional copies can be obtained from: publication@sciyo.com First published February 2010 Printed in India Technical Editor: Teodora Smiljanic Cover designed by Dino Smrekar Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications, Edited by Mikhail Grishin p. cm. ISBN 978-953-7619-80-0 Preface Invention of the solid-state laser has initiated the beginning of the laser era. Performance of solid-state lasers improved amazingly during five decades. Nowadays, solid-state lasers remain one of the most rapidly developing branches of laser science and become an increasingly important tool for modern technology. This book represents a selection of chapters exhibiting various investigation directions in the field of solid-state lasers and the cutting edge of related applications. The materials are contributed by leading researchers and each chapter represents a comprehensive study reflecting advances in modern laser physics. Considered topics are intended to meet the needs of both specialists in laser system design and those who use laser techniques in fundamental science and applied research. The book begins with the section devoted to new laser media and key components (ch. 1 - ch. 3), followed by theoretical and experimental studies the objective of which was to improve temporal and spatial performance of mid-infrared lasers (ch. 4, ch. 5). Novel schemes of side-pumped lasers are also considered in this part of the volume (ch. 6, ch. 7). Subsequent several chapters describe specific applications of solid-state lasers. In particular, remote sensing, absolute distance measurement, and ignition of automobile engines are described in chapters 8 - 10. Nowadays, development of ultrafast laser systems, including amplification of ultrashort pulses to high energies, is based mainly on solid-state laser technology. A substantial part of the volume is devoted to ultrafast phenomena. Amplifying techniques, including regenerative amplification and optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification, are described in significant depth (ch. 11 - ch. 13). Modern methods of the femtosecond pulse characterization as well as the pulse shaping and spectrum control are also considered in detail (ch. 14 - ch. 18). Impressive achievements in femtosecond lasers intensify investigations in the scope of the high-field science. In turn, advances in this area allow development of coherent radiation sources which simultaneously produce extremely short wavelength (reaching soft X-rays particularly by means of high-order harmonic generation) and feature the attosecond pulse duration. Moreover, ultra-intense laser pulses provide new possibilities in the particle acceleration technique. Chapters 19 - 25 cover fundamentals and development of the laser-based high-field science. VI This book is the result of efforts of experts from different countries. I would like to acknowledge the authors for their contribution to the book. I also wish to acknowledge Vedran Kordic for indispensable technical assistance in the book preparation and publishing. Editor Mikhail Grishin Institute of Physics and EKSPLA uab Vilnius, Lithuania Contents Preface V 1. Concentration-Dependent Laser Performance of Yb:YAG Ceramics and Passively Q-switched Yb:YAG/Cr,Ca:YAG Lasers 001 Jun Dong, Ken-ichi Ueda, Hideki Yagi and Alexander A Kaminskii 2. New Infrared Luminescence from Bi-doped Glasses 025 Yasushi Fujimoto 3. Faraday Isolators for High Average Power Lasers 045 Efim Khazanov 4. Numerical Simulation of High-Power Operation of 2 μm Co-doped Tm,Ho Solid-State Lasers 073 O. A. Louchev, Y. Urata, M. Yumoto, N. Saito and S. Wada 5. Actively Q-switched Thulium Lasers 095 Jan K. Jabczynski, Lukasz Gorajek, Waldemar Zendzian, Jacek Kwiatkowski, Helena Jelinkova, Jan Sulc and Michal Nemec 6. Efficient Intracavity Beam Combining of Multiple Lasers in a Composite Cavity 119 Ming Lei 7. Compact, High Brightness and High Repetition Rate Side-Diode-Pumped Yb:YAG Laser 125 Mikhail A. Yakshin, Viktor A. Fromzel, and Coorg R. Prasad VIII 8. In-line Typed High-Precision Polarization Lidar for Disaster Prevention 143 Tatsuo Shiina 9. Precision Dimensional Metrology based on a Femtosecond Pulse Laser 169 Jonghan Jin and Seung-Woo Kim 10. Micro-Solid-State Laser for Ignition of Automobile Engines 195 Masaki Tsunekane, Takayuki Inohara, Kenji Kanehara and Takunori Taira 11. High Gain Solid-State Amplifiers for Picosecond Pulses 213 Antonio Agnesi and Federico Pirzio 12. Dynamics of Continuously Pumped Solid-State Regenerative Amplifiers 239 Mikhail Grishin and Andrejus Michailovas 13. Toward TW-Peak-Power Single-Cycle IR Fields for Attosecond Physics and High-Field Science 279 O. D. Mücke, S. Ališauskas, A. J. Verhoef, A. Pugžlys, A. Baltuška, V. Smilgevičius, J. Pocius, L. Giniūnas, R. Danielius, and N. Forget 14. Measurement and Control of Carrier-Envelope Phase in Femtosecond Ti:sapphire Laser 301 Zhiyi Wei, Hainian Han, Wei Zhang, Yanying Zhao, Jiangfeng Zhu, Hao Teng and Qiang Du 15. Pulse Measurement Techniques Using an Acousto-Optic Programmable Dispersive Filter 319 Nicolas Forget and Thomas Oksenhendler 16. Pulse-Shaping Techniques Theory and Experimental Implementations for Femtosecond Pulses 347 T. Oksenhendler and N. Forget 17. Femtosecond Filamentation in Temperature Controlled Noble Gas 387 Zhenming Song, Yun Wei, Shiying Cao, Weipeng Kong, Dongqing Pang, Ruxin Li, Qingyue Wang and Zhigang Zhang 18. Diffraction Gratings for the Selection of Ultrashort Pulses in the Extreme-Ultraviolet 413 Luca Poletto, Paolo Villoresi and Fabio Frassetto 19. High-Harmonic Generation 439 Kenichi L. Ishikawa IX 20. High-Order Harmonic Generation from Low-Density Plasma 465 Tsuneyuki Ozaki, Rashid Ganeev, Masayuki Suzuki and Hiroto Kuroda 21. An Attosecond Soft x-ray Nanoprobe: New Technology for Molecular Imaging 489 Sarah L Stebbings, Jeremy G Frey and William S Brocklesby 22. Relativistic Nonlinear Thomson Scattering: Toward Intense Attosecond Pulse 509 Kitae Lee, Sang-Young Chung, and Dong-Eon Kim 23. Radiation Dynamics from the Ultra-Intense Field Ionization of Atoms 539 Isaac Ghebregziabher and Barry Walker 24. Laser-based Particle Acceleration 565 Hans-Peter Schlenvoigt, Oliver Jäckel, Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer, and Malte C. Kaluza 25. Laser-Driven Proton Acceleration Research and Development 609 Alexander S. Pirozhkov, Hiroyuki Daido, Mamiko Nishiuchi and Koichi Ogura [...]... must be folded many times into thin laser gain 2 Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications medium disk with mirrors in order to absorb sufficient pump power, which makes the laser system extremely complicated Some applications require that the lasers should be compact and economic; therefore, the cooling system is eliminated in compact and easily maintainable laser system Therefore,... linearly polarized laser operation due to the combination of linearly 16 Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications Average output power (mW) oscillation of Cr:YAG crystal under high intracavity laser intensity(Eilers et al., 1992) and the crystalline-orientation selected linearly polarized states of Yb:YAG crystal(Dong et al., 2008) Maximum average output power of 310 mw was obtained... yttrium aluminium garnet fine powders for transparent YAG ceramic Japan Patent 10-101411 Yang, P., Deng, P & Yin, Z (2002) Concentration quenching in Yb:YAG J Lumin Vol 97, No 1, (51 - 54) Yankov, P (1994) Cr4+:YAG Q-switching of Nd:host laser oscillators J Phys D Vol 27, No 6, (1118 - 1120) 24 Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications Yin, H., Deng, P & Gan, F (1998) Defects in YAG:Yb... Yb:YAG single-crystals (CYb = 10, 15, and 20 at.%) 4 Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications lasers at 1030 nm with two-pass pumping scheme The laser performance of Yb:YAG ceramics is nearly comparable to or better than their counterpart single crystals depending on the Yb doping concentration The effect of Yb concentration on the optical-to-optical efficiency and laser emitting spectra... New Infrared Luminescence from Bi-doped Glasses Yasushi Fujimoto Institute of Laser engineering, Osaka University Japan 1 Introduction Infrared luminescent materials are widely used as laser media, for example, Nd:YAG and Er-doped silica fibers In the infrared region, luminescence offers many advantages as laser media due to the variety of optics and excitation sources, such as semiconductor lasers and. .. of low doping Yb:YAG ceramics is worse than those obtaining from Yb:YAG singly crystals The laser performance of 20 at.% Yb:YAG ceramics is better than its counterpart single crystal Both Yb:YAG ceramics and crystals miniature lasers oscillate at multi-longitudinal modes, the number of longitudinal-mode increases with absorbed pump power Strong mode competition and mode hopping were observed in these... these lasers 6 Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications was monitored by using a CCD camera, and beam quality factor, M2, was determined by measuring the beam diameters at different positions along the laser propagation direction Copper holder DBS 940 nm laser-diode M1 M2 OC Yb:YAG Output Fig 2 Schematic diagram of laser-diode pumped Yb:YAG ceramics and single-crystals miniature lasers... pumped miniature lasers were used in the experiments To absorb sufficient pump power, high doping concentration was needed for thin gain medium Therefore, high doping concentration Yb:YAG single-crystals and ceramics were used in the laser experiments Three Yb:YAG ceramics samples (CYb = 9.8, 12, and 20 at.%) were used in the laser experiments Comparable Yb:YAG single-crystals (CYb = 10, 15, and 20... pump power 20 Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications thresholds of Yb:YAG crystals were higher than their ceramics counterparts due to the pump configuration, the efficient laser operation was obtained by using both Yb;YAG ceramics and single-crystals The laser performance of 1-mm-thick Yb:YAG ceramics and crystals becomes worse with Yb concentration under present miniature laser... (Barabanenkov et al., 2004), and sintering temperature is about 200 oC lower than the melt point of Yb:YAG crystal, the segregation of Yb in grain boundary can only be achieved by diffusion or migration, therefore the distribution of Yb in gain and boundary should be close to homogeneous When Yb ions were doped in YAG ceramics, the segregation of ytterbium ions in the grain boundary, accompanied by . Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications Edited by Mikhail Grishin Intech IV . at.%) ceramic and Yb:YAG single-crystals (C Yb = 10 , 15 , and 20 at.%) Advances in Solid-State Lasers: Development and Applications 4 lasers at 10 30 nm with two-pass pumping scheme. The. 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20 25 850 900 950 10 00 10 50 11 00 0 5 10 15 20 25 Yb:YAG ceramics Yb:YAG crystals α abs (cm -1 ) Yb concentration (at.%) (a) Ceramics Crystals α abs (cm -1 ) Wavelength