Coupling efficiency improvement, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics 
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Today, Ronic and I installed the new telescope and locked the cavity.
- We locked at the amplifier current of 1 A and obtained 32% of coupling. (see Figure 1)
- The telescope was designed for a current of 2 A (output power ~10 W). To inject this power, we need to add some filters to devices. |
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Coupling efficiency improvement, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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- Today, Ronic and I locked at the amplifier current of 2 A and obtained ~60% coupling after optimizing the CEP (see Figure
1).
- The injected power is 10 W at 2 A. We measured only 14 kW inside the cavity, which corresponds to an effective gain of 1,400 and a full gain |
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Injection at the amplifier current of 2 A, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Today, Ronic and I optimized the locking at the amplifier current of 2 A and obtained ~ 21 kW inside the cavity.
- When all the iris open, the injected power is 10 W and the coupling is ~ 40%, corresponding to an effective gain of 2,100 and
a full gain of 5,250. But the coupling may not be the true value because there is a large spot around the output beam. |
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Polarization issue, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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These days, Ronic, Aurélien, Fatematuj and I have been doing some tests on polarization issue, trying to see if it is possible to obtain higher
gain under other polarization conditions.
We installed an additional half-wave plate + PBS + PD at the transmission. By rotating the waveplate of the injection laser, we can compare |
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Polarization issue, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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just to add some details :
about the S and P polarization frequency shift:
the PZT scan is 10Vpp at 3.1Hz => the slope is 62 V/s because of the triangle shape of the PZT scan. |
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Polarization issue & 50kW with 22W injection, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Today, Ronic and I lock the cavity on the other polarization and achieved 50kW with 22W injection.
- After we optimize and lock the cavity in vertical polarization, we rotate the waveplate at the transmission to minimize the signal, then rotate
the waveplate at the injection laser to maximize the signal. We lock the cavity in this horizontal polarization and optimize CEP and alignment. |
High power experiments (200kW), posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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These days, Ronic and I achieved 200kW inside the cavity and 70% coupling efficiency.
- By optimizing the telescope, the coupling reached 70% with iris fully open and maintained 60%-70% coupling at high power.
- The cavity mode went from 2.2mm,2.5mm (38kW) to finally 2.3mm,2.8mm (200kW) without changing a lot. |
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High power experiments (200kW), posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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all the injection power in the chart have not been measured recently but during the Loic thesis period.
and these old measurements stopped at 5.5A of pump current.... so, the data at "8A" is a pure estimation.
about the last measurement : |
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High power experiments (272kW), posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Today, Ronic and I achieved 272kW inside the cavity at 7.5A. The coupling maintained 60%-70%.
Amp current (A)
Injection power (W)
Circulating power (kW)
Gain
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Amplifier power and mirror transmission, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Today, Ronic, Daniele, Aurélien and I measured the amplifier power and mirror transmission.
Current (A)
0 (2rd stage)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
7.5
8
Power
(W)
1
1.8
11.8
23.5
35.5
47
57.5
66.9
70.7
74.9
For |
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High power experiments (500kW), posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Last week, we achieved a stable intracavity average power of 500kW, limited by amplifier power. The experimental data are shown in Figure 1.
- We measured the transmitted laser with a power meter in the windows behind M2 and M4 respectively, and the results were consistent, so the
measurements were credible. |
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High power experiments (520kW), posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Yesterday, Ronic, Xing, Qili and I achieved a more stable 520kW power at 7.5A (71W injection) by optimizing the alignment and locking parameters. (Figure
1)
- The cavity can be stable locked when airflow is on. At 7.5A, the pump temperature is about 28℃. The chiller temperature didn't |
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High power experiments (550kW), posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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- Today we moved the position of the D-shaped mirror at 6A. When motor1 (vertical) is 0.2mm away from the spot, the power in the cavity rises from 457kW
to 483kW. Gain=8407 is similar to that at low power (Gain=8511). So the D-shaped mirror lost some of the gain in the previous experiments. At 4A and 5A
we did not move the D-shaped mirror. (Figure 1) |
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Larger beam size & Spectrum, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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- We re-measured the gain before moving the mirror. Gain ~9000 was achieved at 3A, but as the power increased, the gain dropped and was difficult to
optimize. In fact, we found that each day the gain was a little higher than the previous day.
Amp current (A)
Injection power (W)
Circulating |
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Different cavity modes & Pulse width, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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- Last week, we obtained three curves of the variation of different cavity modes with power (Fig. 1). By comparing the gain for similar cavity mode sizes,
we found that the gain always drops with increasing power.
- We measured the pulse width. The pulse width of the seed laser, after CVBG, amplified at 2A was measured by UPD (rise time < 70ps). Code |
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Different cavity modes & Pulse width, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Additional information:
The pulse duration has been performed in RF on a UPD-70-IR2-P photodiode from Alphalas GmbH by carefully deconvoluting the response function
of the photodiode measured directly with the sub-picosecond laser beam. |
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Finesse measurement (35k), posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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These days, Ronic, Aurélien and I use OEwaves CW laser to measure the finesse of SBOX. We made 5 measurements at 100kHz / 4s sweeps.
The finesse is around 35k (see Figure 1), corresponding to an enhancement factor of 14k.
In our experiments, we only saw up to 9k gain with 70% coupling, corresponding to an enhancement factor of 12.8k. |
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Install 2-mirror cavity, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Today, Viktor and I started installing the two-mirror cavity.
- Firstly, we cleaned the environment and the dust counter showed good cleanliness
- After opening the cavity we tried to determine the source of the strange spot with a laser detection card and found that the beam was |
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Install 2-mirror cavity, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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Today Viktor and I completed the installation of the two-mirror cavity and managed to lock and measure the finesse.
- The finesse is 36k now (see figure 1). For the designed value of the mirror, the expected finesse is ~50k.
- The diameter of M2 transmission is 1.67 mm,1.65 mm (see figure 2). |
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Finesse measurement of 2-mirror cavity, posted by Xinyi Lu at Optical room about lasers and optics
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- Today Daniele and I cleaned the spherical mirror by wiping it with alcohol, and the finesse increased to 47k in air.
- After vacuuming, the final finesse is about 45k. The enhancement factor is expected to be 23k.
- Then we tuned the cavity length, FSR = 216.666 MHz. Aurélien helped us to install the menhir laser of 216 MHz. |