Radiation-Balanced Lasers: History, Status, Potential

The review of history and progress on radiation-balanced (athermal) lasers is presented with a special focus on rare earth (RE)-doped lasers. In the majority of lasers, heat generated inside the laser medium is an unavoidable product of the lasing process. Radiation-balanced lasers can provide lasing without detrimental heating of laser medium. This new approach to the design of optically pumped RE-doped solid-state lasers is provided by balancing the spontaneous and stimulated emission within the laser medium. It is based on the principle of anti-Stokes fluorescence cooling of RE-doped low-phonon solids. The theoretical description of the operation of radiation-balanced lasers based on the set of coupled rate equations is presented and discussed. It is shown that, for athermal operation, the value of the pump wavelength of the laser must exceed the value of the mean fluorescence wavelength of the RE laser active ions doped in the laser medium. The improved purity of host crystals and better control of the transverse intensity profile will result in improved performance of the radiation-balanced laser. Recent experimental achievements in the development of radiation-balanced RE-doped bulk lasers, fibre lasers, disk lasers, and microlasers are reviewed and discussed.

Spectral Characteristics and Molecular Structure of (E)-1-(4-Chlorophenyl)-3-(4-(dimethylamino)phenyl)prop-2-en-1-one (DAP)

In this work, a laser dye of (E)-1-(4-chlorophenyl)-3-(4-(dimethylamino)phenyl)prop-2-en-1-one (DAP) was synthesized and examined as a new laser medium. The compound DAP’s photophysical properties were investigated under the influence of solvents, concentrations, and pump power excitations. The absorption spectra showed a single band, and the shape of the spectra remained the same, regardless of the optical density. The fluorescence spectra showed a band around 538 nm; its intensity was inversely proportional to the concentration. DAP exhibits dual amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) bands at 545 and 565 nm under suitable pump power laser excitation and concentration. The results revealed that the ASE band at 565 nm is affected by solvents polarity, concentrations and pump power energies. This band could be attributed to the combination of two excited molecules and the solvent between them (superexciplex). Moreover, the molecular structure, the energy bandgap, and the total energy of DAP was calculated using density functional theory.

Analysis of Vase Shaped Pumping Cavity for Solar-Pumped Laser

Although sunlight is a promising renewable energy source, the light is incoherent and difficult to use directly. Therefore, a solar-pumped laser, which directly converts sunlight into coherent laser light of, is a promising technology. A solar-pumped laser collects sunlight into the laser medium to realize laser oscillation. In order to realize an efficient solar-pumped laser system, it is necessary to design a pumping cavity that absorbs maximal sunlight into the laser medium with minimal thermal shock. In this research, the pumping cavity shape was studied using a numerical ray tracing simulation. As a result, it was found that a cone shaped pumping cavity can be expected to improve the absorption rate by approximately 30% over a cylindrically shaped pumping cavity. Furthermore, the absorption power density distribution can be flattened by a vase shaped pumping cavity, while maintaining the same absorption efficiency. The vase shaped pumping cavity has almost half the dispersion of the absorbed power density in the laser medium when compared with the cone shaped pumping cavity.

"Analytical Model of Pulse Amplification in Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier "

"Doping a part of the optical fiber core by (Er3+ ) ions in presence of external pumping power will lead to form the erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA).The performance of this optical amplifier depends on (the power and the wavelength of the pumping laser, the power and wavelength of the input signal, amplifier length, ion concentration). These parameters will affect the characteristics of EDFA such as amplifier gain, gain saturation, noise figure and output power. However, these characteristics can be determined by solving the EDFA propagation and rate equations. The solution of these equations of two-level laser medium can be done numerically. In this paper, we are proposed a novel method to solve these equations. The reconstructed results are perfectly coincided the well known numerical results.