Compensation of the thermally induced depolarization in a double-pass Nd:YAG rod amplifier with a stimulated Brillouin scattering phase conjugate mirror

Stimulated Brillouin scattering phase conjugate mirrors (SBS-PCMs) are extensively used to compensate the phase distortion of active media in a high-energy laser system with double-pass amplification. However, the depolarization loss from the thermally induced birefringence of the active medium by a photoelastic effect cannot be avoided despite the uses of phase conjugate mirrors. In this work, the depolarization loss in a double-pass Nd:YAG rod amplifier with a SBS-PCM has been studied with Jones matrix calculations. In addition, the depolarization ratios and the leak beam patterns are obtained experimentally and theoretically for four possible optical schemes. Both experiment and theoretical results show that depolarization is effectively compensated when a Faraday rotator is located after the amplifier.