Quantum electrodynamics in a laser and the electron laser collisionQuantum electrodynamics in a laser and the electron laser collision

Quantum electrodynamics in a laser is formulated, in which the electron-laser interaction is exactly considered, while the interaction of an electron and a single photon is considered by perturbation. The formulation is applied to the electron- laser collisions. The effect of coherence between photons in the laser is therefore fully considered in these collisions. The possibility of y-ray laser generation by use of this kind of collision is discussed.     

Generation of a hollow laser beam by a multimode fiber

A simple method to generate a hollow laser beam by multimode fiber is reported.A dark hollow laser beam is generated from a multimode fiber and the dependence of the output beam profile on the incident angle of laser beam is analyzed.The results show that this hollow laser beam can be used to trap and guide cold atoms.     

Theoretical study on the laser gain of a multi-stage dye laser amplifier

Theoretical studies on laser gain of a multi-stage dye laser amplifier are presented in this paper. The resultsshow that the influences of amplified spontaneous emission(ASE)and nonlinear absorption of excited-state on the gain are different for different input laser energies and gains. A threshold input intensityexists for a specific system. If the imput intensity is higher than the threshold, the nonlinear absorptionof excited-state will be the main cause for gain decrease. Otherwise, the ASE is the main cause. A newscheme is proposed to calculate the gain of the amplifier by the comparison of the input intensity with theeffective saturation intensity and the choice of the calculation gain method.     

Frequency-locked tunable LD laser with a broad bandwidth

Using lock-in amplifer and proportional, integral, and derivative (PID) electric circuit, the frequency of diode laser is stabilized on a highly mechanical stable Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity transmission peak. When the frequency locking system is on, the frequency tunable range of the laser is about 4 GHz around the D1 transition of Rb. The laser frequency tuning is implemented by scanning the FP cavity length. The fluctuation of frequency of the output laser is less than 1 MHz, and the drift of the center frequency is less than 1.5 MHz in 1.5 min. This system has great potential of the application in the experimental investigation of the interaction between light and atoms, especially, for the case of far off the atomic resonance.     

Generation of 7-fs laser pulse directly from a compact Ti:sapphire laser with chirped mirrors

A compact femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser resonator consisting of three chirped mirrors and one output coupler was designed. By accurately balancing the intra- cavity dispersions between Ti:sapphire crystal, air and chirped mirrors, we directly generated the laser pulse shorter than 7 fs at the average power of 340 mW with 3.1 W pump. The repetition rate of the laser oscillator is 173 MHz at the centre wavelength of 791 nm, and the ultrabroaden spectrum covers from 600 nm to 1000 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the simplest laser resonator capable of generating sub-10 fs laser pulse.     

Electron acceleration in a tightly focused laser beam

Electron acceleration in a tightly focused ultra-intensity linear polarized laser beam is investigated numerically. It has been found that the acceleration is strong phase dependent and is periodic to the variety of the initial laser field phase. When optimal initial parameters are chosen, the electron can be accelerated effectively. The accelerated electrons are emitted in pulses of which the full width is less than the half period of the laser field.     

Transverse-mode controlling of a large-mode-area multimode fiber laser

Coiling technique is used to control the transverse mode of a large-mode-area(LMA)multimode fiber laser.By winding the fiber to a coil with different radius,high-order modes of a multimode fiber laser are suppressed one by one and finally 15.4-W single-transverse-mode output is achieved when the coil radius is 20 mm.It is found that as the coil radius decreases,the beam quality of a multimode fiber laser gets better but the slope efficiency drops for higher-order modes are discriminated.During the experiment,as the coil radius of multimode fiber changes,output characteristic of the laser has been measured.Meanwhile, the mode loss of different modes is calculated theoretically.It is proved that the experimental measured results fit well with the theoretically calculated results.     

Coherent 420 nm laser beam generated by four-wave mixing in Rb vapor with a single continuous-wave laser

We demonstrate the generation of the coherent 420 nm laser via parametric four-wave mixing process in Rb vapor.A single 778 nm laser with circular polarization is directly injected into a high-density atomic vapor,which drives the atoms from the 5S1/2 state to the 5D5/2 state with monochromatic two-photon transition.The frequency up-conversion laser is generated by the parametric four-wave mixing process under the phase matching condition.This coherent laser is firstly certified by the knife-edge method and a narrow range grating spectrometer.Then the generated laser power is investigated in terms of the power and frequency of the incoming beam as well as the density of the atoms.Finally,a 420 nm coherent laser with power of 19μW and beam quality of Mx^2=1.32,My^2=1.37 is obtained with optimal experimental parameters.This novel laser shows potential prospects in the measurement of material properties,information storage,and underwater optical communication.     

Fe:ZnSe laser pumped by a 2.93-μm Cr,Er:YAG laser

We demonstrated an Fe:ZnSe laser pumped by a 2.93-μm Cr, Er:YAG laser at liquid nitrogen and room temperature in single-shot free-running operation for the first time. The xenon flash lamp pumped Cr, Er:YAG laser had a maximum single pulse energy of 1.414 J, and the threshold and slope efficiency were 141.70 J and 0.70% which were respectively reduced by 29.3% and increased by 52.2% compared with the Er:YAG laser. At liquid nitrogen temperature of 77 K, the maximum single pulse energy of the Fe:ZnSe laser was 197.6 m J, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 13.4%. The central wavelength and full width at half maximum(FWHM) linewidth were 4037.4 nm and 122.0 nm, respectively. At room temperature, the laser generated a maximum single pulse energy of 3.5 mJ at the central wavelength of 4509.6 nm with an FWHM linewidth of 171.5 nm.     

Free-running emerald laser pumped by laser diode

Free-running emerald laser pumped by 660-nm laser diode (LD) was reported. Free-running output power of 24 mW has been obtained with overall efficiency of 1.4% and slope efficiency of 11.9% when the LD incident power was 2.56 W. The laser threshold value of emerald crystal was estimated to be 0.7 W.     

High-power output from a compact OPCPA laser system

With a tabletop hybrid Nd:YAG-Nd:glass laser as pump source, a compact optical parametric chirpedpulse amplification(OPCPA)laser system with a peak output power of 16.7 TW and a pulse duration of120 fs has been demonstrated.Chirped pulses are amplified from 50 pJ to more than 3.1 J with an energygain of above 6×10~(10)by three LBO optical parametric amplifiers with a pump energy of 12.4 J at 532nm.After compression, a final output of 2.0-J/120-fs pulse is obtained. To the best of our knowledge,itis the highest peak output power from an OPCPA laser so far.In addition, a practical design of 1-PWlaser system based on the technique of OPCPA is also proposed.     

Multi-pulse operation of a Kerr-lens mode-locked femtosecond laser

Our experimental results show that the presence of a proper amount of negative group velocity dispersion is essential to multi-pulse operation of a Kerr-lens mode-locked femtosecond laser.We demonstrate that the pulse separations and the number of pulses contained within a cavity round trip are strongly dependent on the initial perturbations.The results allow us to get a better understanding on the influences of the convoluted self-phase modulation and intra-cavity dispersions on the stable multi-pulse oscillation in a Kerr-lens mode-locked femtosecond laser.     

2.1μm Ho：LuAG ceramic laser intracavity pumped by a diode-pumped Tm：YAG laser

We report a compact Ho：LuAG ceramic laser intracavity pumped by a diode-pumped Tm：YAG ceramic laser. The laser oscillation is accomplished by using a common linear cavity configuration containing Tm：YAG and Ho：LuAG ceramics. The 1.0 at.% Ho：LuAG ceramic laser yields 1.15 W of maximum output simultaneously at 2094 and 2100 nm with a beam quality factor of M2-2.8.     

A self-seeded fiber laser incorporated with a fiber Bragg grating external cavity semiconductor laser

A self-seeded fiber laser incorporated with a fiber Bragg grating external cavity semiconductor laser (FBG-ECL) and a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) were reported in this paper. The MZI provided a Q-switching with response time in the order of micro-seconds. The FBG-ECL provided narrow pulses as seeds to shorten the Q-switched pulses. Experimentally, pulse width of 0.8 μs was measured, which was one fifth of the pulse width without self-seeding.     

Optical feedback characteristics in a dual-frequency laser during laser cavity tuning

The optical feedback characteristics in a Zeeman-birefringence dual-frequency laser are studied during the laser cavity tuning in three different kinds of optical feedback conditions: (i) only // -light is fed back; (ii) only ⊥-light is fed back; (iii) both lights are fed back.A compact displacement sensor is designed using the experimental result that there is a nearly 90 degrees phase delay between the two lights' cosine optical feedback signals when both lights are fed back into the laser cavity.The priority order that the two lights' intensity curves appear can be used for direction discrimination. The resolution of the displacement sensor is at least 79 nm, and the sensor can discriminate the target's moving direction easily.     

Charateristics of a helical axial flow CO_2 laser

A novel CO_2 laser tube which forms a helical axial gas flow is designed. The influences of such a flow on the output laser beam is discussed.     

Nearly transform-limited optical pulse from a passively mode-locked laser diode

An optical ultra-short pulse train with a duration of 2.9 ps was successfully generated from a passively mode-locked laser diode. The time-bandwidth product was 0.43, and it was very close to the transform-limited value of a Gaussian waveform. The highest peak power of 10 mW in an InP-based passively mode-locked laser has been achieved. The laser is promisng as an optical source for an ultra-high-speed bit rate transmission system, especially for the optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) system.     

Compact waveguide CO_2 laser excited by a RF power supply

The design and performance of radio frequency (RF) excited partial Z-fold waveguide CO_2 laser with two channels are exposed. The length of the partial Z-fold channel is 3×460 mm and that of the single channel is 460 mm. The electrodes for the two channels are common and excited by a same RF source. According to our analysis, this kind of structure can greatly improve the laser offset frequency stability. In the experiments, we studied the variation of laser output power with gas pressure for two different channels. The maximum laser output power is about 23 W for the partial Z-fold channel and about 6 W for the single channel.     

An optical device to homogenize a laser beam

Based on segmentation-recombination principle, a specific optical device is designed to homogenize a high-power CO2 laser beam which is used as a heating source. A model is developed to simulate the intensity distribution of converted laser beam. The results show that the theoretical simulation is consistent with experimental record. The umformity of converted beam spot is discussed. After modifying the optical parameters of current device, a new optical system is given, through which the uniformity of shaped beam spot is improved remarkably.     

Nonlinear propagation of an intense Laguerre–Gaussian laser pulse in a plasma channel

The nonlinear propagation of an intense Laguerre–Gaussian(LG) laser pulse in a parabolic preformed plasma channel is analyzed by means of the variational method. The evolution equation of the spot size is derived including the effects of relativistic self-focusing, preformed channel focusing, and ponderomotive self-channeling. The parametric conditions of the LG laser pulse and plasma channel for propagating with constant spot size, periodically focusing and defocusing oscillation,catastrophic focusing, and solitary waves are obtained. Compared with the laser pulse with fundamental Gaussian(FG)mode, it is found that the effect of vacuum diffraction is reduced by half and the effects of relativistic and wakefield focusing are decreased by a quarter due to the hollow transverse intensity profile of the LG laser pulse, while the effect of channel focusing is the same order of magnitude with that of the FG laser pulse. Thus, the matched condition for the intense LG laser pulse with constant spot size is released obviously, while the parameters of the laser and plasma for the existence of solitary waves nearly coincide with those of the FG laser pulse.