Quanta-Ray Lasers

Nd:YAG Laser Training Material

Newport Confidential
2
Engineering Counts
World leader with 25+ years experience
Highest quality components
gold reflectors, larger optics...
Controlled manufacturing
in-house power supplies, in-house optics and coatings, rod
testing
Stringent final test
8-10 hour stability runs, CCD beam diagnostics
Engineering, design, experience
Largest established installed base
10,15,20 yr. old systems still meeting original specs. in
working labs.
Largest and most experience world-wide service and support
team.
Newport Confidential
3
Pulsed Nd:YAG Basics
Newport Confidential
4
Pulsed YAG Basics
PRO Series
LAB Series
HG
HR
OC
Amplifier pump chambers
Oscillator pump chambers
Seeder
Seeder
HG
Oscillator pump chambers
OC
HR
Newport Confidential
5
Thermal Birefringence
Compensation
Benefit to you?
Excellent mode quality at high rep
rate and high energies.
Compensator Compensator
Polarizer Polarizer
Polarization state Polarization state
Rod Rod Rod Rod
Pockels Pockels Cell Cell
/4 /4
HR HR
OC OC
Birefringence compensation in
oscillator
Dual-rod oscillator
Patented process
More technical details:
Newport Confidential
6
YAG Pump Chamber
Quanta Ray: Staying ahead of the pack after 25 years
as world leader!
Elliptical Gold reflectors
High reflectivity & reliability
Uniform rod illumination
Highly effective rod cooling
Benefits to you?
- Mode stays constant pulse-to-pulse
- Uniform Beam profile
More technical details:
Newport Confidential
7
Internally Sealed Cavity
* Customers report 20 year old Quanta Rays still operating
with original optics!
Quanta Ray: Staying ahead of the pack after 25 years
as world leader!
Feature: Completely
sealed internal beam path.
Benefit to you? Protected optics mean
long laser lifetimes.*
Newport Confidential
8
Harmonic Generation box
Features:
The LAB and PRO HG-Box can hold up to 4
crystals.
The translation arms slide the crystals in and
out of the beam path and serve as levers for
the angle tuning.
High resolution angular adjustment (80 threads
per inch) ensure optimum phase matching.
Electronically controlled heating on each
crystal and water cooling on the housing
ensure constant temperature (superior to
heating alone).
Benefits to you?
Ease of use.
No waste of time in changing crystals.
Stable output energy at harmonics.
Newport Confidential
9
The BeamLok/D-Lok Advantage
Features:
Stabilized beam pointing with active control.
Dramatically lower divergence drift.
Rapid laser warm-up typically under 15 minutes.
Longer term stability, throughout the day and over the months.
Longer, more productive flashlamp lifetimes.
Fewer downstream alignments. SHG efficiencies remain high longer.
Benefits to user:
More experiments less time tweaking and waiting.
Better experiments minimum changes in energy, beam pointing or
divergence.
Less money spent on flashlamps.
Newport Confidential
10
Quanta-Ray BeamLok
Newport Confidential
11
D-Lok, Divergence Control
Features:
D-Lok monitors IR performance as the
lamps age.
The microprocessor then controls the pump
level of the lamps to maintain the divergence
of the system
By controlling the divergence, output
energies are maintained over the life of the
lamps.
This increases lamp lifetimes significantly.
SHG efficiencies remain high longer.
Benefits to you?
Save money on flash lamp replacements.
Save time not replacing lamps.
Energy and divergence changes will not
affect experiments.
Newport Confidential
12
D-Lok
By controlling divergence, D-Lok maintains UV pump energy (355
nm) and hence MOPO output.
MOPO remains stable for longer (OPO performance is best
measure of YAG beam stability).
D-Lok ensures longer lamp lifetimes.
Newport Confidential
13
Quanta-Ray Lasers
The LAB& PRO
Standard Graphical User Interface:
Nd:YAG Resonators
QR Resonators and Pump Chambers
Newport Confidential
15
Pump Chamber
Quanta-Ray strikes a balance between efficiency and mode by
employing elliptical gold reflector pump chamber.
The gold surfaces provide high reflectivity and the proprietary
technique used to rough these surfaces ensures uniform cross
sectional rod illumination.
This rugged pump chamber design has been in use for nearly 20
years.
Newport Confidential
16
QR Pump Chamber
Feature: The Q-R pump chamber is water cooled using an internal
closed loop. The temperature controlled turbulent water flow over the
YAG rod removes the heat evenly and efficiently. This ensures a
constant thermal loading in the rod.
Benefit to user: Maintain good beam quality at high energy and high rep
rates.
Lamp Lamp
Rod Rod
Newport Confidential
17
Pump Chamber
Bottom Line on cooling of QR pump
chambers:
By controlling the rod temperature we control and maintain
beam quality, stability (essential when seeding) and
divergence.
Newport Confidential
18
Quanta-Ray Advantage
Flashlamps
Quanta-Ray flashlamps are easy to change.
Only the flashlamps are removed, not the entire pump chamber
assembly, as in competitive YAG designs.
Removing the pump chamber assembly increases the chances
of misalignment and contamination of the Nd:YAG rod surfaces.
In Quanta-Ray lasers, the entire beam path and therefore the
optics remain sealed and protected during flashlamp changes.
Quanta-Ray flashlamps have color coded lead wires - In
Continuum systems, the flashlamps dont come with lead wires
making it very easy to mix-up the anode and cathode.
Installing flashlamps backwards destroys them. Careful
engineering, design and thought by the Quanta-Ray team
eliminates this costly risk.
Quanta Ray
Internally-Sealed Beam Path
Newport Confidential
20
Internally Sealed Cavity
Quanta-Ray lasers are the only lasers on the market to feature
internal seals between all cavity spaces - the laser beam path is thus
completely sealed and protected from contamination (dust, oil, etc.).
Contaminated surfaces in such high peak power lasers can result in
catastrophic failures or at least long term performance degradation.
The tubes can be purged with dry nitrogen, making these laser safe
and reliable - even in the harshest environments.
Note: even apparently clean labs often have contaminants such as
oil from pumps, solvents, dust from older insulated ceilings, etc.
Newport Confidential
21
Quanta-Ray Advantage
Internal Sealed Cavity
Beam tubes have been used in Q-R lasers from the
beginning - customers claim the reason there 10-20 year
old lasers are still running is in large part due to the
protection offered by these tubes. No competitors have
lasers running in the field as old as the Quanta-Ray
systems.
Beam tubes also offer an additional safety barrier when
taking the cover off the laser- they protect the user from
stray beams as well as the optics.
Dry nitrogen purging adds extra protection- teflon rings
within the tubes provide a tight seal throughout the beam
path to minimize nitrogen consumption.
Quanta Ray
Beam Quality
Newport Confidential
23
Unstable Resonator
Unstable Resonator
Stable Resonator
Unstable resonators offer the best balance between good beam quality with high
power and efficient extraction of energy in the YAG rod. The unstable resonator
design collects laser energy from more of the volume in the laser cavity, leading to
higher overall energy conversion efficiency than with a stable resonator.
Most high energy pulsed YAG lasers on the market today use unstable resonators.
Newport Confidential
24
Beam Quality - Modulation
Most people who worry about beam quality are those who are concerned about
near field modulation and how the modulation will propagate into the mid field.
Almost all pulsed solid state lasers, especially those with amplifiers, will have
some kind of near field modulation that degrades the far field brightness as a
result of diffraction from limiting apertures.
In Quanta-Ray YAG lasers (and most others) the limiting aperture is the YAG
rod diameter. To eliminate diffraction completely the limiting aperture in the
cavity would have to be five times 1/e
2
of the beam. This is a bit unrealistic (8
mm beam within a 40 mm rod!).
Rod
aperture
0 100%
Clip
intensity
level, I
clip
Amplitude modulation
on clipped beam, I
Input intensity Output intensity
Newport Confidential
25
Quanta-Ray Advantage
Beam Quality
The challenge at Quanta-Ray was to design an output coupler that
would create such a super Gaussian at a number of different repetition
rates and output energies.
The advantage is in the proprietary output coupler designs. Because
Spectra-Physics makes its own optics, we were able to design the
output coupler around the laser itself. Other manufacturers are forced
to buy off the shelf optics from large optics and coating companies.
The patented reflectivity gradients in our super Gaussian output
couplers are tailor made to produce the best beams for each lasers.
Each output coupler is also designed around the different thermal
effects which effect beams at different repetition rates.
Finally, because we manufacture our own optics and coatings we have
complete control over their quality and availability.
Nd:YAG Quanta Ray
Harmonic Generation
Newport Confidential
27
Harmonic Generation
The LAB and PRO HG can hold up to 4 crystals.
The translation arms slide the crystals in and out of the beam path and
serve as levers for the angle tuning.
High resolution angular adjustment (80 threads per inch) ensure
optimum phase matching.
Electronically controlled heating on each crystal and water cooling on
the housing ensure constant temperature (superior to heating alone).
1st Stage Crystal
Translation Arm
Input Window
2nd Stage Crystal
Translation Arm
Output Window
Newport Confidential
28
Harmonic Separation PRO-
Series
Beam dump
HG
BeamLok
Laser Head
The PRO series can be configured for one, two or three
wavelength output.
Beam dump
HG
BeamLok
Laser Head
Single wavelength: second, third or forth harmonic
Note: ultra pure single wavelength output is possible using two sets of the
same dichroics.
IHS-XXX
532, 355 or 266 nm
Newport Confidential
29
Quanta-Ray Advantage
Dichroic mirrors are characterized by high reflectivity at one wavelength
range and low reflectivity elsewhere.
Advanced optical coating technology developed in-house at Spectra-
Physics specifically for our high energy YAG lasers now allow excellent
color separation with high damage thresholds, even into the ultraviolet
All Quanta-Ray lasers use 38 mm optics, the largest and most robust
on the market.
provide greater than 98 % spectral purity.
easier alignment
reduced diffraction
High resolution mounts (80 threads per inch!).
Harmonic Separation
Quanta Ray
BeamLok & DLok
Newport Confidential
31
BeamLok Pointing Control
Newport Confidential
32
BeamLok Pointing Control
BeamLok picks off the final output beam and monitors beam pointing in the far
field
Far-field detection gives true angular sensitivity
Compact far-field detector fits inside laser head
Closed loop feedback controls an active mirror via the microprocessor controller
High resolution pointing correction to give best performance
BeamLok can be configured for fundamental or each harmonic for unsurpassed
beam pointing
Must be configured with dichroic separator options
Newport Confidential
33
BeamLok Benefits
Warm-up times are significantly reduced to minutes.
Energy, beam quality and pointing stability are at peak performance in
under 10 minutes.
Other manufacturers shorten warm-up times by introducing external
heaters or by heating the cooling water. This will bring the laser up to
energy spec. in a shorter time but cannot help the pointing stability.
Normally, thermal lensing takes > 1minute, reaching full energy takes
1-5 minutes with harmonics, cavity thermal equilibrium (beam pointing)
takes 30-40 minutes.
Newport Confidential
34
BeamLok Benefits
Solid-state OPOs are very angular sensitive due to phase
matching conditions.
Beam variations of the pump source will effect the performance of
an OPO, especially narrow line versions.
+/- 100 rads beam movement can cause 40% reduction in
master oscillator and 10 % reduction in power oscillator output.
Stable MOPO performance is achieved with +/- 25 urad
Newport Confidential
35
D-Lok, Divergence Control
Without D-lok the amount of heat (pump power) poured into the YAG rod
decreases as the lamps age - this decreases the thermal lensing and causes the
beam to diverge.
The IR energy decreases by 10% after 30 million shots but the divergence can
cause significantly higher losses in the harmonics.
D-Lok monitors IR performance as the lamps age.
The microprocessor then controls the pump level of the lamps to maintain the
divergence of the system
By controlling the divergence, output energies are maintained over the life of the
lamps.
This increases lamp lifetimes significantly,
Newport Confidential
36
D-Lok
By controlling divergence, D-Lok maintains UV pump energy and
hence MOPO output.
MOPO performance remains stable for longer.
D-Lok ensures longer lamp lifetimes.