Ultrafast pulsed lasers are a key industrial tool for precision machining and there is a requirement to reach higher average powers of 100 W and beyond. This thesis explores the design considerations of low complexity, picosecond, thin-disk, Nd:YVO4 amplifiers at a seed wavelength of 1064 nm to reach this goal of 100 W with excellent beam quality.Through modelling and experiment, the barriers and challenges of this amplifier architecture were explored and developed. The critical role of temperature and its deleterious effects on amplifier performance were examined in great detail and modelled, as were the effects of energy transfer up-conversion. These effects were incorporated into the amplifier model and allowed an estimation of the number of passes of the seed beam required to reach an output of 100 W for various amplifier parameters.The role of Nd:YVO4 as a gain material for amplifying picosecond pulses generated by a microchip Q-switched laser was also explored. The performance of three amplifier stages were examined and modelled, showing that doping concentration is a key choice when designing amplifiers in this power regime.
| Date of Award | 8 Jun 2022 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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| Sponsors | Fraunhofer UK Research Limited & EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) |
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| Supervisor | Alan Kemp (Supervisor) & Allister Ferguson (Supervisor) |
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