Enhanced self-heterodyne performance using a Nd-doped ceramic YAG laser

✍ Scribed by A. McKay; P. Dekker; D.W. Coutts; J.M. Dawes

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 383 KB
• Volume: 272
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0030-4018
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2006.11.059

✦ Synopsis

Two-frequency operation in ceramic neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet is demonstrated for 1.064 lm operation with a selfheterodyne beat-frequency tuning range in excess of 1.5 GHz. A 6 dB improvement of the peak-beat strength is seen in the ceramic material over that of similar crystalline Nd:YAG lasers. Experimentally, the ceramic host material is shown to have substantially higher polarization mode coupling constant, C = 0.72 ± 0.05, compared to crystalline Nd:YAG, C = 0.16 ± 0.05. The peak-beat strength is related to mode coupling. In general the Nd:ceramic YAG dual-frequency laser offers superior performance as a photonic-based radio-frequency source over Nd:YAG.