Acousto Optic Cavity Dumper0 pages

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Features/Applications

Hight Deffraction Efficiency Օ Small Size Brewster Angle Incidence Օ High Modulation Bandwidth Up to 380 MHz Frequency Օ Low Cost For this application the +1 order beam from the AO device is used. The basic structure of a cavity-dumper laser apparatus is shown in figure below. The purpose of cavity-dumping is similar to that of q switching, but the operating principles are different. For a cavity-dumping laser the A-O
device usually lies in an inactive state (with no electric power applied to the transducer) between two very high reflectance mirrors. Under these circumstances, the Q value of the resonant cavity is extremely high and very intense lasing occurs within the cavity. Applying a strong electric pulse to the AO device reflects this radiation to a planar mirror as shown by the dotted lines in the figure below. As a result, nearly all the laser energy is dumped out of the resonant cavity in the form of a singleoptical pulse An AO device used for cavity-dumping must operate in the brag for a diffracted beam operation and high diffraction efficiency. The response speed of the AO device should be high so as to optimize the pulse width and inherence the pulse repetition frequency. The resonant cavity is composed of three spherical mirrors, which serve to focus the laser beam in the plane of the AO device and thereby maximize the response time. The proper design of the AO device is very important. A cavity-dumperoffers high peak power and higher repetition frequencies by combining cavity-dumping with mode locking, subnanosecond pulses can be achieved at repetition rates of 1 MHz without sacrificing average power of the laser. >