Design and construction of xenon flash-lamp pumped solid-state laser in ceramic cavity and measuring some physical parameters

In this article, the report of design, construction and optimization of an xenon flash-lamp pumped solid-state Nd:YAG laser in a ceramic cavity are presented. A laser rod of Nd:YAG with a 1.1 wt% doping and a dimension of 80 mm×5 mm, as an active medium, and a xenon flash-lamp with a inner diameter of 7 mm, an arc length of 3 in, and a repetition frequency of 0.2 Hz, as the pump source, were used. At first, the laser was optimized with Findlay-Clay method, in terms of the output coupler reflectivity. The gain and the loss for pump energy of 4.9 J were achieved to be 0.9 and 0.005, respectively. Thus we calculated the optimum reflectivity as 32%. From a mirror with a reflectivity as 25% (which was the closest to our available reflectivity in laboratory) was used. A total electrical-to-optical efficiency of 3% was achieved at 1064 nm for 25% reflectivity for output coupler. For a 0.2 Hz repetition rate and a pumping energy of 9 J, a beam spot size of 3.98 and a quality factor of 17 were achieved. The results are valid for a cavity design with the mentioned parameters.