Intracavity gain gratings

Aurélie Moreau (1) , Quiong He (1) , Isabelle Zaquine (1) , Alain Maruani (1) , Robert Frey (2, 1)

1 LTCI - Laboratoire Traitement et Communication de l'Information
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Manolia

Intracavity gain gratings are theoretically demonstrated to exhibit diffraction efficiencies that are 100 times larger than unity at pump powers substantially below the lasing threshold. Experiments performed using a Nd:YVO4 microlaser pumped below threshold by two interfering Ti:sapphire laser beams are described. Huge enhancement of the diffraction efficiency (5000x) and a large increase of the angular selectivity (10x) are demonstrated despite the angular reduction of the Fabry-Perot cavity finesse. Much better results are expected using gain gratings with larger areas or thinner cavities such as vertical cavity surfaceemitting lasers. Such large fan-out values could be very interesting for applications to optical signal processing.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Aurélie Moreau, Quiong He, Isabelle Zaquine, Alain Maruani, Robert Frey. Intracavity gain gratings. Optics Letters, 2007, 32 (3), pp.208210. ⟨hal-00867681⟩