Virtual Journal of Laser

Inon Moshe, Steven Jackel, Yaakov Lumer, Avi Meir, Revital Feldman, Yehoshua Shimony
We report maintenance of perfect radial-polarization purity in high-power, cw pump chambers using strengthened, polycrystalline Nd:YAG laser rods. Although the cubic symmetry of single-crystal rods caused threefold symmetric birefringence due to shear stresses at the ends of the pumped zone, ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2511-2513 (2010)]

Chong Qi Yu, Hui Wang
Although the lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) can be used to detect very small displacement owing to its linear characteristic of the lateral photovoltage (LPV) response to laser position, the effective measurement is limited only within the one-dimensional (1D) region between two contacts. In ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2514-2516 (2010)]

Nicolas Dalloz, Stéphane Randoux, Pierre Suret
We show, from experiments and numerical simulations, that dispersion of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) mirrors influences the formation of the optical power spectrum of Raman fiber lasers by shifting the cavity zero-dispersion wavelength inside the FBG reflectivity bandwidth. This results in a spectrum ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2505-2507 (2010)]

Andreas Braeuer, Stefan Dowy, Alfred Leipertz
We used two-dimensional laser Raman scattering and elastic light scattering to analyze mixture driven particle formation in the supercritical antisolvent process. Using only one excitation laser, the partial density of the antisolvent CO_2, the composition of the solvent/antisolvent mixture, and ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2553-2555 (2010)]

Martin Fibrich, Helena Jelínková, Jan Šulc, Karel Nejezchleb, Václav Škoda
A cw Pr:YAlO_3 microchip-laser operation in the near-IR spectral region is reported. A microchip resonator was formed by dielectric mirrors directly deposited on the Pr:YAlO_3 crystal surfaces. For active medium pumping, a GaN laser diode providing up to 1W of output power at ~448 nm was used. ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2556-2557 (2010)]

X. F. Li, S. F. Yu
We performed a rigorous study to reduce threshold gain of Au-nanoparticle lasers in the deep-subwavelength scale with the consideration of strong interband transitions in Au and device dimensions. We found that the high-threshold optical gain of the nanolaser (over 10^5cm^−1, which is ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2535-2537 (2010)]

Zhi M. Liao, M. L. Spaeth, K. Manes, J. J. Adams, C. W. Carr
We present an empirical model that describes the experimentally observed laser-induced bulk damage and conditioning behavior in deuterated potassium dihydrogen phosphate (DKDP) crystals. The model expands on an existing nanoabsorber precursor model and the multistep absorption mechanism to include ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2538-2540 (2010)]

Peter Tidemand-Lichtenberg, Haynes Pak Hay Cheng, Christian Pedersen
A technique enforcing unidirectional operation of ring lasers is proposed and demonstrated. The approach relies on sum-frequency mixing between a single-pass laser and one of the two counterpropagating intracavity fields of the ring laser. Sum-frequency mixing introduces a parametric loss for the ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2567-2569 (2010)]

Martin Schellhorn
A Q-switched Tm:fiber-laser-pumped Ho:LuLiF_4 laser is reported that has been optimized for high-energy pulses at low repetition rates. Operating at 100Hz, a pulse energy of 24.8mJ with pulse widths of 47ns at a wavelength of 2052nm was achieved. The beam propagation factor (M^2) was measured to be ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2609-2611 (2010)]

Qinghai Song, Shumin Xiao, Zhengbin Xu, Vladimir M. Shalaev, Young L. Kim
We report a spectroscopic method using coherent random lasers for a simple, yet nanoscale, sensing approach. Unique spectral properties of coherent random laser emission can be detectably altered when introducing nanoscale perturbations to a simple nanocomposite film that consists of dielectric ... [Opt. Lett. 35, 2624-2626 (2010)]