Vol. 24, No.

25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28185

Quantitative measurement of thermal lensing

in diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser by use of
digital holographic interferometry
JIANGLEI DI,1,4 YANG YU,2,3 ZHAOMIN WANG,2,3 WEIJUAN QU,3 CHEE
YUEN CHENG,3 JIANLIN ZHAO1,5
1
MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical
Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072,
China
2
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang
Avenue, 639798 Singapore
3
Ngee Ann Polytechnic, 535 Clementi Road, Singapore 5994892, Singapore
4
jiangleidi@nwpu.edu.cn
5
jlzhao@nwpu.edu.cn

Abstract: Thermal lensing in diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser has been measured

quantitatively using digital holographic interferometry. A series of holograms, carrying the
information of the laser rod under different pump currents, are recorded with a CCD and
reconstructed numerically. The optical path difference induced by the thermal lensing and the
corresponding evolution process under different currents are obtained accordingly. Further,
the thermal lensing diopters, induced aberrations, and its Zernike coefficients are calculated.
The proposed method can be applied in the thermal lensing measurement and the
optimization design of a laser resonator.
© 2016 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (350.6830) Thermal lensing; (140.6810) Thermal effects; (090.1995) Digital holography; (090.2880)
Holographic interferometry; (120.5050) Phase measurement.

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#278279 http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OE.24.028185
Journal © 2016 Received 11 Oct 2016; revised 17 Nov 2016; accepted 21 Nov 2016; published 28 Nov 2016
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28186

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1. Introduction
A diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) with high efficiency, high output power, good
spatial beam quality and stability is highly desired in scientific and industrial applications.
Compared with end-pumped one, the diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser is more simple,
robust, reliable, and usually used to achieve high power output. In diode-side-pumped
Nd:YAG laser, the pump power is focused directly into the center Nd:YAG active medium
and deposited as heat to generate a temperature gradient along the radial direction. Then a
strong thermal loading occurs in the Nd:YAG rod, and this thermal gradient results in a
refractive index variation in the material. Meanwhile, the thermal gradient also results in a
nonuniform thermal expansion leading to significant stress distribution and refractive index
variations due to the photoelastic effect. Consequently, this leads to thermal effects, such as
thermal lens, thermally induced birefringence, and spherical aberration in the laser rod. For an
induced purely parabolic phase profile, thermal effects result in an aberration-free thermal
lens that changes the resonator stability domains and modifies the laser beam characteristics.
For a not strictly parabolic phase profile, the lens aberrations lead to losses and degradation in
beam quality. In addition, the stress-induced birefringence creates depolarization losses,
defocusing, and polarization-dependent astigmatism on the laser beam [1, 2].
Given the importance of thermal lensing, it is extremely significant to get the accurate
parameters of the thermal lens used to aid resonator design and optimization. Numerical finite
element methods can be applied in the calculation of the thermal effects [3, 4]. Many
analytical models for thermal effects inside laser rod have also been proposed [5–7].
However, these studies are all based on ideal theoretical model and cannot accurately reflect
the real situation. Due to the complex mechanisms of thermal lensing, experimental
determination is often the only accurate method for its measurement. One simple way is to
make a probe beam travel through the laser rod and measure the axial shift of the focal point
position [8,9]. The main drawback of this method is low accuracy with a relative precision
only 20-30%. It’s also very difficult for weak thermal lensing measurement. By monitoring
the laser output and recording the thermal lensing effect that causes the instability of the laser
cavity, the focal length of thermal lens can also be determined [10]. This method does not
enable the aberration measurement, which can be solved by use of Shack–Hartmann
wavefront sensor, lateral shearing interferometry or iterative algorithm. The drawback of
Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor is the low cut-off spatial frequency, primarily caused by
the two-dimensional sampling of the wavefront performed by the microlens array [11, 12].
Lateral shearing interferometer is simpler to implement and insensitive to vibration. However,
its cost is high and the algorithm is complex [13, 14]. Two or more images are requisite in an
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28187

iterative reconstruction process to iterate the wavefront, which will affect the instantaneity
[15].
In this paper, we adopt digital holographic interferometry (DHI) for quantitative
measurement of the thermal lensing effect in diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser. DHI is a full
field, non-destructive, high-resolution and real time technique that captures the quantitative
amplitude and phase information of specimens. It can achieve quantitative phase imaging,
numerical refocusing, real-time detection, and numerical correction of aberrations. In the
thermal lensing measurement, by continuously recording a series of holograms of the crystal
rod under different pump currents and numerically reconstructing them, we can obtain the
optical path difference (OPD) distributions, which represents the wavefront changes of the
object beam induced by thermal lensing effects, and the evolution of the thermal lens with the
current changes. Further, we can also obtain the thermal lensing diopters, the induced
aberrations, and its Zernike coefficients. The experiment results show the feasibility of DHI
in the quantitative measurement of thermal lensing.
2. Theory
In DPSSL, the laser diode pump module is the engine of the laser, affecting critical system
parameters, such as beam quality, pump efficiency, and harmonic generation efficiency, etc.
The thermal lensing effect in DPSSL is determined by the combined effects of the
temperature- and stress-dependent variation of the refractive index and the distortion of the
end-face curvature of the rod. The expression of the total focal length f of thermal lens is
given by [1]
−1
KA  1 dn α r (n − 1) 
f =  + α Cr ,φ no3 + 0 0  . (1)
Ph  2 dT l 
Where, K is the thermal conductivity, A is the cross sectional rod area, Ph is the total heat
dissipated in the rod, Cr,φ is the photo-elastic coefficient, α is the thermal coefficient of
expansion, and r0 and l are the radius and length of the rod, respectively. For the Nd:YAG
crystal, temperature-dependent variation of the refractive index constitutes the major
contribution of the thermal lensing. The stress-dependent variation of the refractive index
modifies the focal length about 20%. The effect of end-face deformation of the rod is less
than 6%, which is usually ignored. As a result, the thermal lensing effect influences the
distribution of the detection light field.
In this paper, DHI is implemented to achieve quantitative measurement of the thermal
lensing effect in the laser rod. Considering the object wave O(x,y) and reference wave R(x,y)
interfere on the CCD target plane, the intensity of the interferogram can be given by

I ( x, y ) = O ( x, y ) + R ( x, y ) + R* ( x, y ) O ( x, y ) + R ( x, y ) O* ( x, y ) ,
2 2
(2)

where the symbol “*” denotes the complex conjugate operation, and x, y are the rectangular
coordinates on the CCD target plane. This hologram can then be numerically reconstructed by
use of convolution method, and the corresponding reconstructed object wave field U(ξ, η) is
expressed as

{
U (ξ ,η ) = IFFT . FFT {C ( x, y ) I ( x, y )} ⋅ FFT { g (ξ ,η , x, y )} . } (3)

Where, g(ξ,η; x,y) is the impulse response function, FFT and IFFT represent the Fourier and
inverse Fourier transform operations, respectively, and C(x,y) is the numerical reference
wave.
Assuming that we separately record two digital holograms H1 and H2 for the laser rod
under different currents, and the reconstructed object waves in two different states are U1(ξ,η)
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28188

and U2(ξ,η). Based on double-exposure holographic interferometry [16–20], the phase change
Δφ between U1(ξ,η) and U2(ξ,η) can be calculated as

 U ( ξ ,η ) 
Δϕ = arg  1  ( mod 2π ) , (4)
 U 2 (ξ ,η ) 

where the function arg[ ] is used to obtain the argument value. This phase change is wrapped
due to the argument operation, the data are utilized for quantitative phase measurement after
removal of the 2π ambiguity [21].
As we know, ignoring the end-face deformation of the rod, the refractive index change
inside the laser rod induced by thermal lensing effects leads to the change of OPD Δl(x, y)
and thereby to an interference phase change between two light waves passing through the rod
before and after the change. Then the phase change Δφ(x,y) due to the index change is given
by
2π 2π L
Δϕ ( x , y ) = Δl ( x , y ) =  [ n( x, y , z ) − n0 ]dz , (5)
λ λ 0

Where, λ is the wavelength, L is the rod length, n0 is the initial refractive index of the rod
under unperturbed state and n(x,y,z) is the final refractive index distribution [22]. The light
beam passes through the Nd:YAG rod in z direction and the integration is taken along the
propagation direction. Because of the symmetry of the rod and its wraparound sleeve, the
refractive index is supposed to be constant along z direction over the entire length of the rod,
and the phase map representing the phase change directly reflects the variation of refractive
index of the rod.
3. Experimental set-up
Figure 1 shows the experimental setup for measuring the thermal lensing effects in diode-
side-pumped Nd:YAG laser by use of DHI.
In our DPSSL system, the laser diode pump module consists of a Nd:YAG rod, a cooling
sleeve, a diffusive optical reflector chamber, and three diode array modules as illuminated in
the bottom left inset of Fig. 1. The crystal rod has a fine ground barrel to minimize the light
loss that occur within the round crystal surface. The rod with a diameter of 1.8mm and length
of 65mm is cut in Brewster angle (151.2° for 1064nm) and fixed by an antireflection optical
glue in the center of the chamber. The pumping diodes are set to make the pumping light
incident to barrel surface of the laser rod horizontally with a total power of 105 W at 35 A
input current. This ensures good light coupling of the three diodes directly into the laser
crystal rod. The design is to reduce the birefringence effect of the Nd:YAG crystal, make
additional loss to the vertical polarized light and increase the horizontal polarization ratio of
the laser output. The use of elongated laser crystal is to act as an aperture for the laser cavity
to suppress the higher mode operation.
In the experiment, the DPSSL is under non-lasing condition driven with different pump
currents. A narrow beam from a He-Ne laser with λ = 632.8nm is collimated to a plane wave
by the collimator. Then the plane wave is divided into two parts by the first beam splitter.
One beam is reflected by the mirror and the second beam splitter to form the reference beam.
The other beam is reflected by the mirror and travels into the laser rod with an incident angle
i1 = 61.34° as shown in the upper right inset of Fig. 1. This beam travels along the rod and is
modulated by the generated thermal lensing effects acting as the object beam. The object
beam and the reference beam interfere with each other on the CCD target plane. Since the
pump diodes emit 808nm bright light affecting the digital hologram recording, a narrow-band
pass filter for 632.8nm is placed in front of the CCD target. To avoid the twin images
problem and to eliminate the zero order diffraction, off-axis holograms are recorded with a
monochorme CCD camera (The Imaging Source DMK41AU02 with 1280 × 1960 pixels and
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28189

pixel size of 4.65μm × 4.65μm). The distance between the camera and the end of the laser rod
is 185mm. Since the illumination beam is refracted on the Brewster-angled surface of the rod,
the round beam is skewed to an elliptical beam.

Fig. 1. Experimental setup for measuring the thermal lensing effects in diode-side-pumped
Nd:YAG laser by use of digital holographic interferometry

4. Experiment results and discussions

Initially, when the input current of laser diode is 0 A, we record an initial hologram of the
measured rod. Then we gradually increase the current to 40 A and record a series of
holograms in this process. Figure 2 shows the recorded digital hologram under 0 A current
and the corresponding reconstructed phase map (unit: rad), respectively. Because the cross
sectional area of the rod is much less than the reference beam, the effective measurement
region concentrates on the central part of Fig. 2(b). The elliptical phase region is nearly flat
due to the absence of thermal gradient inside the rod.

Fig. 2. Recorded digital hologram and corresponding reconstructed phase map at 0 A current.

Based on double-exposure holographic interferometry, each individual hologram is

numerically reconstructed separately to obtain a series of sequential phase maps of the object
beam for the pump currents from 0 A to 40 A. Figure 3 shows the reconstructed 2D wrapped
phase maps (unit: rad) under different currents, in which the effective elliptical measurement
region has been extracted. It clearly shows that the wrapped phase fringes become denser
with the current increase. The change of the phase fringes is asymmetrical in horizontal and
vertical directions, representing an uneven refractive index distribution in the rod. In laser
diode pump module, most of the pump light energy is concentrated in the middle horizontal
region as the horizontal setting diode, resulting in the heat absorption mainly in this section,
and thus a large thermal gradient is generated in the vertical direction leading to asymmetric
thermal lensing.
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28190

Fig. 3. Reconstructed phase map under different currents. (a)-(f) 10 A, 15 A, 20 A, 25 A, 30 A,

35 A.

After further phase unwrapping operation, the unwrapped phase map can be obtained and
the thermal lensing induced OPD can be calculated according to Eq. (5). This OPD also
represents the wavefront variation after the beam passing through the rod. By seriating these
maps, the shape and evolution of wavefront (unit: μm) under different pump currents can be
obtained. Figure 4 shows this evolution (Visualization 1). It is found that the change of OPD
is not obvious when the pump current is less than 8 A, which is mainly due to the minimum
required excitation current threshold of the diodes. When the pump current exceeds this
threshold value, the output power of laser diodes linearly increases with the increasing current
and up to 35 W when the current is equal to 35 A. Under this circumstance, the DPSSL works
at a stable state with a good beam quality, pump-to-laser efficiency, and harmonic generation
efficiency. With the currents from 8 A to 35 A, the change of OPD gradually increases, but
again not obvious for a more than 35 A current due to the heat inside the rod reaching a
dynamically balanced state. Although the pump energy gradually increases with the
increasing current, the heat absorbed by the rod remains unchanged, as some heat is
conducted away by the cooling sleeve. Therefore, the thermal gradient in the rod is almost
unaltered and the OPD is also unchanged. As the recording and reconstruction of the digital
holograms are almost real time in DHI, the quantitative measurement of thermal lensing is
real time too.

Fig. 4. Shape and evolution of wavefront under different pump currents (Visualization 1).

The measured 2D phase distribution of wavefront (unit: rad) under 35 A pump current is
shown in Fig. 5(a). Compared with the flat phase distribution in Fig. 2(b), significant phase
changes occurred in Fig. 5(a), which indicates that the phase is delayed by the refractive
index difference introduced by the thermal lensing under 35 A pump current. The wavefront
variation in vertical direction is more obvious due to the large thermal gradient. As the crystal
rod is cylindrically symmetric, this can be attributed to the highly elongated nature of the
pumped region. Since the incident beam is a plane wave, and the rod is equivalent to a single
lens, this measured result characterizes the thermal lens’s modulation capabilities to the light.
Assuming that the initial refractive index of the Nd:YAG rod is 1.8295 and the refractive
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28191

index vibrations along axial direction of the rod are homogeneous in the heating process, the
maximum refractive index difference introduced by the temperature gradient can be
calculated as Δn = 4.79 × 10−5 according to Eq. (5). Further according to the thermal lensing
theory, we can get the heat transfer parameters in the pumping process.
The amount of thermal lensing caused by the temperature distribution in the crystal rod is
an important parameter for the design of optical resonator. In a first approximation, we ignore
the surface distortion effect, the thermally induced lens can be described by considering only
the temperature-dependent and stress-dependent part of the refractive index, which allows to
estimate the deviations of thermal lens from a perfect parabolic lens. Figure 5(b) shows the
profile of OPD along the white dash line in Fig. 5(a). By fitting this retrieved wavefront with
a parabolic function, we can further obtain the focal length and diopter of the thermal lens.

Fig. 5. (a) Measured 2D phase distribution of wavefront under 35A pump current; (b) fitting of
the OPD profile along the white line.

Thermal lensing data were successfully retrieved for the Nd:YAG rod and the measured
thermal lensing diopter as a function of the pump current is shown in Fig. 6. The thermal lens
diopters are clearly very different in the horizontal and vertical directions. This can only be
attributed to the asymmetric side-pumped mode, as the crystal is cylindrically symmetric. Due
to the larger thermal gradient in the vertical direction, the thermal lensing diopter in this
direction is greater than that in the horizontal direction. We can find a linear relationship
between the thermal lensing diopter and pump power as the linear relationship between the
pump power and current, which is consistent with the theory analysis in Ref [1].
It should be noted that the above measurement is for Nd:YAG laser under non-lasing
condition, and the two mirrors of the resonant cavity has been removed in the measurement.
In fact, it’s also feasible to measure thermal lensing for laser under lasing condition. The
output light wavelength of our laser system is 1064nm, and the resonant cavity mirrors are
narrow-band laser line mirrors at 1064nm. Hence, we can place the resonant cavity and the
crystal rod entirely to the measurement region of the experimental setup. The DHI approach
still works for 632.8nm detection light.
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28192

Fig. 6. Measured thermal lensing diopter vs. pump current.

For a perfectly parabolic distortion of the wavefront or equivalently a pure thermal lens,
the thermal distortion can be easily compensated by addition in the laser cavity of the
opposite divergent lens or by adjusting the distance of the different cavity elements. However,
the aberrations are present when the wave front distortions are not perfectly parabolic. The
thermal lens deviates strongly from being parabolic in the edge region, and is thus highly
aberrated in Fig. 5(b). Thus, the compensation becomes very difficult and requires complex
systems. While uncorrected, these aberrations may lead to degradation in the beam quality,
and also may incur losses due to diffraction of the beam high spatial frequencies.
As we have obtained the wavefront introduced by the thermal lensing in DHI, we can
further analysis its aberrations by use of Zernike polynomials. Figure 7(a) shows the 2D
phase distribution of the wavefront (unit: λ) in the central circular region of Fig. 5(a). After
implementing Zernike polynomial fitting, the obtained fitting wavefront and the residual error
map are shown in Fig. 7(b) and 7(c), respectively. The corresponding calculated Zernike
coefficients are given in Table 1. Thus, we can easily determine the third item coefficient
(focus). At the same time, the wavefront also includes other aberrations (coma x, trefoil y and
secondary astigmatism x). Some other coefficients can be negligible. Therefore, the
aberrations of the thermal lensing can be analyzed systematically by use of DHI, which can
be used in the optimization design of laser resonator.

Fig. 7. (a) 2D phase distribution of the wavefront in the central circular region of Fig. 5(a); (b)
obtained Zernike polynomial fitting wavefront; (c) residual error map.
 Vol. 24, No. 25 | 12 Dec 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 28193

Table 1. Calculated Zernike coefficients

Mode Zernike coefficients Meaning

0 0.3892λ Piston
1 0.0385λ Tilt x
2 −0.0670λ Tilt y
3 −0.4702λ Focus
4 −0.0013λ Astigmatism x
5 0.0631λ Astigmatism y
6 0.1820λ Coma x
7 0.0597λ Coma y
8 −0.0005λ Primary spherical
9 0.0585λ Trefoil x
10 −0.5420λ Trefoil y
11 0.2794λ Secondary astigmatism x
12 0.0151λ Secondary astigmatism y
13 0.0518λ Secondary coma x
14 −0.0105λ Secondary coma y
15 0.0190λ Secondary spherical

5. Conclusions
We have presented using DHI to measure thermal lensing in diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG
laser quantitatively. The OPD induced by the thermal lensing and the corresponding evolution
process under different currents are obtained. Then the focal length and diopter of the thermal
lens are calculated by fitting the retrieved wavefront with a parabolic function, which is
consistent with theoretical analysis. The induced aberrations and its Zernike coefficients are
also calculated. The experimental results show that DHI is a valuable and important approach
in the measurement of thermal lensing.
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (61405164), Translational Innovation Fund
grant MOE2013-TIF-2-G-011 and MOE2013-TIF-2-G-012 from the Singapore Ministry of
Education (MOE).