Author: Rostalski H.-J. Guhr J. Kleeman B. H. Elschner J. Schmidt G. Ferstl M. Pawlowski E. Steingrüber R. Bostanjoglo G. Motzkus R.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISSN: 1362-3044
Source: Journal of Modern Optics, Vol.45, Iss.7, 1998-07, pp. : 1523-1535
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Abstract
The use of metal gratings inside laser resonators is limited to medium power because of a low damage threshold. High-reflectivity (HR) dielectric layer systems commonly used as laser mirrors offer a damage threshold significantly above that of metals. A diffraction grating on top of a HR system combines high reflectivity with spectral properties. We describe a special HR grating used in a Littrow mounting as a wavelength selective resonator mirror in a 1.44µm neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet laser. The necessary restrictions lead to conditions with four transmission orders, making it more difficult to reach high efficiency, than found by Perry and co-workers. The design of the binary diffraction grating on a dielectric layer system is based on a new finite-element method. Also for the more difficult configuration, a diffraction efficiency of nearly 100% is theoretically possible. Because of the new conditions in contrast with these in the work of Perry and co-workers, other materials have to be used. For two different material combinations, HR gratings are fabricated. The limiting factors in realizing 100% efficiency, are the material parameters and fabrication tolerances. First examples of gratings offer fairly good agreement with the theoretical values.
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