In this Letter, we demonstrate high-quality (Q), millimeter-size, and V-shaped calcium fluoride crystalline resonators for modal modification. To manufacture such resonators, we develop a home-made machining system and explore a detailed process. With a dedicated polished container, three special polishing steps, including grinding, smoothing, and polishing, are employed to achieve the required surface smoothness, which is characterized by less than 3 nm. An ultra-high-Q factor exceeding 10⁸ is obtained by a coupled tapered fiber. In addition, a customized packaged structure for our disk resonator is achieved. The Q maintenance and stable spectrum are realized by sealing the coupling system in a hard disk. The simple, stable, portable, controlled, and integratable device would provide great potential in optical filters, sensors, nonlinear optics, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and especially some applications that require large resonators such as gyroscopes.

A frequency-degenerate cavity (FDC) is the resonator that the ratio of transverse and longitudinal mode frequency spacings is a simple rational number. When an optical resonator is close to the FDC, transverse-mode-locking (TML) takes place with drastic changes of laser mode. We report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the multi-frequency emission and spectral modulation effects coupled with TML in FDC. The Yb:CaGdAlO₄ (Yb:CALGO) crystal with large gain bandwidth was used as a gain medium in an off-axis-pumped hemispherical FDC for realizing broadband emission. Interestingly, the spectrum can transform from a single smooth packet shape to a multi-peak structure; meanwhile, the transverse pattern accordingly transforms into some exotic wave-packet profiles through controlling off-axis displacement in a special degenerate state.

We propose a high-Q photonic-electronic hybrid cavity for single-longitudinal-mode narrow-linewidth oscillation, where part of the cavity is in the radio frequency (RF) domain by a pair of frequency conversions. In the RF part, we can easily achieve MHz filtering and a large delay by inserting an electronic filter. In mathematics, we prove that the frequency conversion pair and electronic filter in between can be equivalent to a high-Q optical filter cascaded low-noise optical amplifier as a whole. Finally, the 20-dB bandwidth of oscillation is 1/20 of that of an optical local oscillator, and the maximum phase noise suppression can reach 65 dB.

A scheme for measuring the intra-cavity round-trip loss of an all-solid-state single-frequency laser by inserting a type-I noncritical phase-matching nonlinear crystal introducing nonlinear loss into the resonator is presented. The intra-cavity round-trip loss is theoretically deduced by analyzing the dependence of the fundamental-wave (FW) and second-harmonic-wave (SHW) powers on the pump factor and the nonlinear conversion factor of the single-frequency laser and experimentally measuring them by recording different FW and SHW powers, which are decided by the temperature of the nonlinear crystal. The measured intra-cavity round-trip loss and pump factor are 4.84% and 6.91% W 1, respectively. The standard deviations of the measured intra-cavity round-trip loss and the pump factor are 0.26% and 0.07%, respectively. This scheme is very suitable for measuring the intra-cavity round-trip loss of a high-gain solid-state single-frequency laser.

We report efficient power scaling of the laser output with an adaptive beam profile from an Nd:YAG dual-cavity master oscillator using a three-stage end-pumped Nd:YVO4 amplifier. We succeed in the fast switching of an excited laser mode by modulating an acousto-optic modulator loss in a dual-cavity master oscillator, thereby achieving temporal modulation of the output beam profile. The outputs from the master oscillator are amplified via a three-stage power amplifier yielding 36.6, 40.5, and 45.4 W of the maximum output at 116.8 W of incident pump power for the transverse electromagnetic, Laguerre–Gaussian, and quasi-top-hat beam, respectively. The prospects for further power scaling and applications via the dual-cavity master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) system are considered.

We numerically performed wave dynamical simulations based on the Maxwell–Bloch (MB) model for a quadrupole-deformed microcavity laser with spatially selective pumping. We demonstrate the appearance of an asymmetric lasing mode whose spatial pattern violates both the x- and y-axes mirror symmetries of the cavity. Dynamical simulations revealed that a lasing mode consisting of a clockwise or counterclockwise rotating-wave component is a stable stationary solution of the MB model. From the results of a passive-cavity mode analysis, we interpret these asymmetric rotating-wave lasing modes by the locking of four nearly degenerate passive-cavity modes. For comparison, we carried out simulations for a uniform pumping case and found a different locking rule for the nearly degenerate modes. Our results demonstrate a nonlinear dynamical mechanism for the formation of a lasing mode that adjusts its pattern to a pumped area.

We report a simple Nd:YAG laser that emits radially polarized beam with helical wavefront. The laser cavity consists of a piece of laser crystal and a plane output coupler, and there is no additional polarization component inside it. The pump light is converted into annular profile through de-focal coupling into a multi-mode fiber. For the continuous-wave (CW) operation, the laser emits radially polarized vortex beam, and it is observed that the helical wavefront of the laser beam is switched from right handedness to left handedness when the output coupler is tilted slightly. For the Q-switched operation under the insertion of a Cr4+:YAG saturable absorber inside the cavity, we obtain radially polarized outputs with left-handedness helical wavefront. By tilting the laser crystal slightly, the laser output switches to azimuthal polarization at pump power larger than 4.5 W and left-handedness helical wavefront of laser beam is preserved.

This Letter proposes a method to balance the gain and loss of the orthogonally polarized emissions of dual wavelengths in a solid laser cavity. By adjusting the tilt angle of the uncoated glass plate inserted into the cavity, the gain and loss of the orthogonally polarized emission lines with small intervals can be balanced to equalize the oscillation thresholds of the orthogonally polarized dual wavelengths. We select the birefringent crystal Nd:LiYF (Nd:YLF) as the gain media, and theoretically analyze the simultaneous oscillation conditions of dual wavelengths with π- and σ-polarized emissions from a four-level transition (F3/24→I11/24 and F3/24→I13/24) in Nd3+. A simple linear cavity structure is adopted in the experiment, and stable CW orthogonally polarized dual-wavelength laser outputs of 1047, and 1053, 1321, and 1313 nm are obtained.