Abstract

Solid-state lasers for high average output power suffer from thermal lensing. stress birefringence and other phase distortions which reduce the beam quality significantly¹. Using phase conjugation based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) the beam parameter product of conventional laser systems can be decreased down to the diffraction limit. SBS cannot compensate stress birefringence and therefore different compensation schemes for Nd:YAG were developed^2,3 resulting in complex setups. Therefore in contrast to multi-amplifier YAG systems with SBS^4,5 we use Nd:YALO as active material to avoid the depolarization effect resulting in simple optical arrangements.

© 1996 IEEE