Measurements of heating and energy storage in diode-pumped Nd:YAG

Two experiments were carried out to measure the stored energy and heat deposited in the laser medium and to determine the heat parameter chi , defined as the heat deposited per unit of stored energy. The stored energy was calculated from small-signal gain measurements. The heat deposition was calculated from interferometric measurements of the thermally induced optical path length changes of the laser rod under test. chi is to be 1.1 in a 200- mu s pump pulse, about one-third of the value obtained for flashpumped Nd:YAG. Without fluorescence decay, chi is 0.7.<
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