A diode-pumped alkali laser (DPAL) is thought to provide the significant promise for construction of high-powered lasers in the future. To examine the kinetic processes of the gas-state media (cesium vapor in this study), a mathematical model is developed while the processes including normal 3-enegry-level transition, energy pooling, and ionization are taken into account in this report. The procedures of heat transfer and laser kinetics are combined together in creating the model. We systemically investigate the influences of the temperature, cell length, and cell radius on the output features of a diode-pumped cesium vapor laser. By optimizing these key factors, the optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of a DPAL can be obviously improved. Additionally, the decrease of the output power due to energy pooling and ionization is also shrunk from 1.63% to 0.37% with the pump power of 200 W after optimization. It suggests that the effects of energy pooling and ionization should be decreased apparently under the optimal conditions. Basically, the conclusions we obtained in this study can be extended to other kinds of end-pumped laser configurations.
Diode-pumped alkali lasers (DPALs) have drawn much attention since they were proposed in 2001. The narrow-linewidth DPAL can be potentially applied in the fields of coherent communication, laser radar, and atomic spectroscopy. In this study, we propose a novel protocol to narrow the width of one kind of DPAL, diode-pumped rubidium vapor laser (DPRVL), by use of an injection locking technique. A kinetic model is first set up for an injection-locked DPRVL with the end-pumped configuration. The laser tunable duration is also analyzed for a continuous wave (CW) injection-locked DPRVL system. Then, the influences of the pump power, power of a master laser, and reflectance of an output coupler on the output performance are theoretically analyzed. The study should be useful for design of a narrow-linewidth DPAL with the relatively high output.
A diode pumped alkali laser (DPAL) provides a significant potential for construction of high-powered lasers. To realize the scaling of a DPAL, heat management should be optimized. In this paper, a new kind of gas-flowing DPAL was proposed, in which a small cross-flow fan with diameter of 125 mm was set in the center of a cylindrical vapor cell whose diameter and thickness is 160 mm and 55 mm, respectively. The gain medium of cesium and the buffer gas of ethane were filled in the vapor cell with the total pressure is about 1 atmosphere. A mathematical model was constructed to systematically study the influence of the rotate speed on the internal temperature distribution and the output features of the laser. And then, the experimental study of the laser system was then carried out, in which the output laser at 894.3 nm with power of 32 W was obtained. The results show that both the velocity distribution and temperature distribution are greatly influenced by the rotate speed of the cross-flow fan, and then the heat generated from the DPAL can be took away efficiently, which is very important to the output performance of the laser system. These results indicate that this new type of gas-flowing DPAL might be a good choice for power scaling of DPALs.
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