Thermally induced birefringence in Nd glass heat capacity disk laser

The temporal behavior of depolarization losses during the pumping and cooling phases in a flash lamp pumped Nd glass heat capacity disk laser is reported. We also investigated the influence of thermally induced birefringence on the laser performance by measuring the output energy and the deformation it produced in the probe beam. The complete two-dimensional thermal profile of the laser disk surface was measured for the determination of the thermal uniformity across the disk surface. A new concept for pumping the laser disk is proposed that can lead to a considerable reduction in the depolarization loss in the Brewster angle configuration and hence provide a high average power solid state laser with good beam quality.