Experimental Study of Diode-pumped Nd:YAG Laser

Olga Pasko, Mehrbod Soleimani, Ahmad Saeed, and Maksim Bulatov

Erlangen Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies (SAOT)
(Dated: March 7, 2011)
This report describes a series of experiments conducted to understand various components of
the diode-pumped YAG laser and their functioning. The objective of the experiment was to verify
the basic theoretical principles involved in a typical laser system and understand the diculties
encountered in their realization in a laboratory.

INTRODUCTION

x 10
10
9
8
7
Pav. (W)

A laser system is a unique source of light which has

several interesting properties that are lacking in a conventional light source, for instance, spectral purity, high
power, coherence and directionality. The main components of a laser system are cavity, active medium and
pump. In this experiment we set up a typical laser system and study the function of each component and analyze the property of the laser radiation obtained. We
also verify the validity of the theoretical model used to
understand the various physical phenomena involved in
obtaining the laser radiation.
We realize a laser system with a hemispherical cavity,
a Nd:YAG crystal serving as the active medium and a
laser diode for the pump light. We rst studied the characteristic of the laser diode, then we measured lifetime
of uorescence of the Nd:YAG crystal which is related to
the lifetime of the level 4 F3/2 ( = 1064 nm). Next we
set up the hemispherical stable aligned cavity, observed
transversal modes and laser spiking. Finally, we studied the behavior of laser by operating it at various levels
of pumping. A knife-edge measurement is subsequently
done to determine the prole of the beam.
This report is organized in the following manner: every
section begins with a detail description of experimental
setup and procedure and concludes with the discussion
of the results.

6
5
4
3

Spontaneous
Emission

2
1

50

100

150
I(mA)

Stimulated
Emission
200

250

300

FIG. 1. Characteristic of the laser diode where the vertical

broken line marks the threshold current (seen to be around
190 mA).

parallel to the rails which is done by an alignment element with circular grid. The characteristic of the laser
diode (Pout vs. Idiode ) recorded using a power-meter is
shown in Fig. 1. As we see from the graph, by increasing
electric current beyond the threshold (190 m), output
power rapidly grows which arms the presence of stimulated emission process.

THE ACTIVE MEDIUM: ND:YAG CRYSTAL

THE PUMP: LASER DIODE
Focusing of the pump inside the crystal

A laser diode with maximum output power, Pmax =

450 mW , and wavelength, = 808 nm (at temperature
25 C), is employed to serve as the pump. The output
beam of the diode laser is an elliptical beam with an extremely small width along the vertical direction; therefore, it tends to diverge very quickly along the vertical
direction. In order to obtain a constant width along the
optical rail we insert a collimating element, with a high
numerical aperture and focal length 6 mm, and adjust
the waists of the output beam to a far o distance (this
process is known as collimation). The resulting beam is
again elliptic with dierent widths along vertical and horizontal direction. Further, the beam needs to be aligned

Once the beam has been collimated, we put the lens

to focus the beam into the Nd:YAG crystal. To nd out
the localization of the focus point we moved dark paper
along the rail until it started burning at a position with
the highest intensity.

Measuring the lifetime of the fluorescence light

After inserting the Nd:YAG crystal we pumped it with

the square signal current (= 341.057 Hz) and observed
the obtained signal on the oscilloscope (Fig. 2). This

5.5
5
4.5
4

Pav. (mW)

3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5

FIG. 2. Signal on the oscilloscope U (t) which corresponds to

the solution of the equation (1) and estimation of the lifetime
of the level 4 F3/2 .

signal gave us the information about the lifetime of the

uorescence light of the YAG crystal (of the level 4 F3/2 ).
To cut the pump wavelength from the laser diode we
used the lter RG100 between the YAG crystal and the
photodiode. To measure a strong density of power we
put a photodiode as close as possible to the Nd:YAG
crystal. For the 4level system, which can be a model
of Nd:YAG lasing operation, without the contribution of
the stimulated emission and stimulated absorption, we
can write the equation for level 3 [1]:
dN3
= Rp (t) A32 N3 ,
dt

(1)

where N3 is the number of ions Nd3+ on the level 3, Rp

is the pumping rate and A32 is the probability of spontaneous emission of photon per unit time. By integration
we obtain:

N3 (t) =

Rp (t )eA32 (tt ) dt

(2)

Corresponding to the square signal current the pumping

rate, Rp (t), can be assumed to be a square function of
duration [0, Tp ] and amplitude Rp0 so that equation (2)
yields
Rp0
N3 (t) =
(1 eA32 t ).
A32

(3)

The population on the level 4 F3/2 (1064 nm) and correspondingly the measured signal drops down to 1/e after
t = = 1/A32 = 180 m, the lifetime of the level. Owing
to a nite lifetime of the level 4 F3/2 the output spectrum
is a Lorentzian with a linewidth
FWHM = A32 =

1
5.6 103 s1 .

(4)

Spontaneous
Emission

Stimulated
Emission

300

350

400

I(mA)

FIG. 3. Characteristic of the Nd:YAG laser where the vertical

broken line marks the threshold current (seen to be around
300 mA).

THE LASER ITSELF

Laser cavity: stability

The cavity of YAG-laser in our experiment is the simplest optical resonator, the Fabry-Perot resonator, which
consists of a plane and spherical mirror located opposite
one another. They are centered to a common optical axis
and are aligned perpendicular to this axis. The range of
stability of our resonator (the fact that a beam remains
inside the cavity after an innite numbers of reections)
is dened by:
01

L
1,
R

(5)

where R is the radius of curvature of the spherical mirror.

In our case R = 100 mm. This means when L 100 mm
our laser cavity is stable.

LASER CAVITY: ALIGNMENT

After alignment and focusing the beam inside the

Nd:YAG crystal, we inserted the OC100 mirror with 98%
reection for 1064 nm. Then we adjusted the orientation
of the output mirror with the micro-metric adjustment
in order to make sure that the uorescence is fed-back
inside the crystal and observed the laser eect onto the
IR-card. With the help of the power-meter we drew the
characteristics of the Nd:YAG laser Pout vs. Idiode (Fig.
3.). As we see from the Fig. 3, by increasing electric
current beyond the threshold (300 mA), output power
rapidly grows which indicates the presence of stimulated
emission process.

3
time. These inaccuracies introduced discrepancy in our
spiking pattern which is depicted in Fig. 4.
700
650
600
550

P (x) (W)

500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
x (mm)

FIG. 4. Oscilloscope display in the presence of spiking.

FIG. 6. . Beam power vs. translation position.

1200

1000

P (x) (W)

800

600

400

FIG. 5. Knife edge measurement.

200

Observation of the modes

200
x (mm)

The beam can be created with an angle with this axis,

resulting in dierent distribution of the intensity. These
are the transverse modes. The number of modes that
may oscillate in a cavity is large, and they are named as
TEMmn where m and n indicate the number of zero on
the X and Y axis (transverse modes). By adjusting the
orientation of the output mirror, we observed dierent
mode pattern with the IR card.

Observation of laser spiking

Spiking of a laser refers to the transient oscillations

in the photon number observed when the laser operates
away from the steady state. It usually occurs when the
pumping rate is slightly above the critical value [2]. Generally, spiking is observed when the laser is turned ON
or whenever there is a sudden perturbation because of
some uctuations of gain, cavity loss or cavity alignment.
The appearance of spiking pattern is dependent on the
number of transverse modes as well. It is then important to make sure that the laser works only in a fundamental mode. Unfortunately, obtaining a fundamental
mode requires a very accurate adjustment of laser components which we did succeed at because of the lack of

FIG. 7. . Beam prole.

Knife-edge measurement

If u(x, y) is the prole of the beam on any given plane

then we dene a marginal power function as
x

P (x) =
dx
dy |u(x , y )|2 .
(6)

If it is an elliptical Gaussian beam then the measurement of P (x) can be used to nd the width of the beam
in the x-direction by plotting dP/dx. The measurement
of P (x) can be done by introducing a knife-edge, usually a plane with well dened edge, into the beam and
measuring the power as a function of the position of the
knife-edge as shown in Fig. 5.

[1] A. Siegman, Lasers (University Science Books, Mill Valley,

California, 1986).
[2] O. Svelto, Principles of Lasers, 5th ed. (Springer).