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

Xianshu Li; Yuchuang Chen; Taoyu Li; Yongjun He; Yangqiu Gao; Huiying Cao; Shousong Deng

doi:10.1117/12.253270

30 September 1996 Development of red internal mirror He-Ne lasers with near-critical concave-convex stable resonators

Xianshu Li, Yuchuang Chen, Taoyu Li, Yongjun He, Yangqiu Gao, Huiying Cao, Shousong Deng

Proceedings Volume 2889, High-Power Lasers: Solid State, Gas, Excimer, and Other Advanced Lasers; (1996) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.253270
Event: Photonics China '96, 1996, Beijing, China

Abstract

Basic properties of the concave-convex stable resonator (CCSR) with cavity parameter g₁g₂ 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. We have made a total of 120 red internal mirror He-Ne lasers with CCSR (g₁g₂ >= 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 TEM₀₀ stably, and the highest output power is 30 mw. The laser beam waist lies outside the resonator at a distance of 1.0 m from the concave mirror, and the beam divergence is 0.45 mrad. For the TEM₀₀ lasers operate normally, the misalignment angle of the resonator mirrors must be less than 10^-5 mrad. 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, we call such a CCSR near critical CCSR (NCSR). It is observed that even if the round trip total loss (including the transmission loss and so on) of TEM₀₀ is only about 0.2 round trip small signal gain of the laser, and the round trip diffraction loss of TEM₀₀ is only about 0.001, still the laser with the NCSR operate with pure TEM₀₀ stably. It is clear that the mode competition in a laser with NCSR is extraordinarily favorable for TEM_{00$. (2} While the TEM₀₀ lasers operate normally, the center frequency of every longitudinal mode is stable, its drift per hour is less than 0.1 longitudinal mode spacing (approximately equals 2.4 X 10⁷ Hz). (3) The superradiant transition at 3.39 micrometers is suppressed.

Citation Download Citation

Xianshu Li, Yuchuang Chen, Taoyu Li, Yongjun He, Yangqiu Gao, Huiying Cao, and Shousong Deng "Development of red internal mirror He-Ne lasers with near-critical concave-convex stable resonators", Proc. SPIE 2889, High-Power Lasers: Solid State, Gas, Excimer, and Other Advanced Lasers, (30 September 1996); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.253270

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