Title

Thermo-Optic Quality Assessment Of Doped Optical Ceramics

Keywords

optical ceramics; Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing; thermal lensing

Abstract

The use of optical quality ceramics for laser applications is expanding, and with this expansion there is an increasing need for diagnostics to assess the quality of these materials. Ceramic material with flaws and contaminants yields significantly less efficient performance as laser gain media and can generate excessive amounts of waste heat. This is a concern that is especially relevant in high power laser applications where thermally induced damage can be catastrophic. In order to assess a set of ceramic and crystalline samples we induce and measure thermal lensing in order to produce a relative ranking based on the extent of the induced thermal lens. In these experiments thermal lensing is induced in a set of nine 10% Yb:YAG ceramic and single-crystal samples using a high power 940 nm diode, and their thermal response is measured using a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. The materials are also ranked by their transmission in the visible region. Discrepancies between the two ranking methods reveal that transmission in the visible region alone is not adequate for an assessment of the overall quality of ceramic samples. The thermal lensing diagnostic technique proves to be a reliable and quick over-all assessment method of doped ceramic materials without requiring any a priori knowledge of material properties. © 2013 Copyright SPIE.

Publication Date

5-30-2013

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Volume

8599

Number of Pages

-

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2004360

Socpus ID

84878171225 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84878171225

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