Vol. 27, No.

11 | 27 May 2019 | OPTICS EXPRESS 15136

Generation of vector polarization in a Nd:YAG

laser
SANBIN CHEN,1,* JIANLANG LI,2,4 SHOUHUAN ZHOU,1 HONG ZHAO,1 AND
KEN-ICHI UEDA3
1
National Key Laboratory on Solid-State Laser, Beijing 100015, China
2
Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800,
China
3
Institute for Laser Science, University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan
4
apuli@siom.ac.cn
*
chensanbin@aliyun.com

Abstract: We demonstrated the generation of an azimuthally and radially polarized laser

beam in a Nd:YAG laser in which a birefringent yttrium vanadate (c-cut YVO4) crystal was
used as the intra-cavity polarization discriminator. AP and RP with respective output 2.4W
(o-o efficiency of 35.4%, M2 = 2.3) and 2.52W (o-o efficiency of 37.2%, M2 = 2.4) were
generated at absorbed pump power 6.78W. We discuss a simple method for converting
between azimuthal and radial polarizations by only regulating input pump power and
mechanism of mode selection in the laser. This vector laser will facilitate many applications.

© 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

1. Introduction
Cylindrical vector beam (CVB), including azimuthally and radially polarized (AP, RP)
beams, characterized by cylindrical symmetric spatial polarization distributions across the
beam cross-section have attracted considerable attention of many important applications.
Such as: particle trapping and acceleration, high-resolution microscopy, material processing
[1–6] and so on.
To produce CVBs with AP or RP, many researchers have been developed different extra-
[7–10] and intra-cavity [11–14] approaches in the last decades. One simple way consists in
placing a birefringent crystal inside the resonator with the conical beam, because this crystal
is low-cost and available everywhere, and the spatial walk off along with it provides us a
simple and efficient discrimination mechanism for cylindrical vector mode in a wide range of
wavelength.
In this letter, we present the intra-cavity generation of beams with both AP and RP in an
Nd:YAG laser. A c-cut YVO4 crystal was employed as intra-cavity polarization discriminator
that distinguishes an azimuthally polarized beam from a radially polarized one, or visa versa.
The conversion between AP and RP in a laser by only changing the input pump power was
studied. The details are shown as follows.
2. Experimental setup
The experimental scheme is shown in Fig. 1. A Φ20 × 1.2 mm, 1% at. Nd:YAG was used as
active materials, both surfaces of it were anti-reflection (AR) coated at 808 nm and 1064 nm.
This microchip was also sandwiched between two flat copper plates, and both copper plates
had the Φ2 mm diameter light tunnel drilled along the cavity axis. The copper plate was
connected to the 15 °C water cooling. The resonator was formed by the high-reflection-coated
(HR) mirror, two lenses (L1 and L2) and the output coupler (OC) mirror. The HR mirror was a
plane-concave mirror with 50 mm curvature radius, and its plane surface was anti-reflection
coated at 808nm and its concave surface was anti-reflection coated at 808nm and high-
reflection coated at 1064nm. The distance between HR and L1 was 100mm. Nd:YAG was in

#358812 https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.27.015136
Journal © 2019 Received 22 Feb 2019; revised 29 Apr 2019; accepted 30 Apr 2019; published 13 May 2019
 Vol. 27, No. 11 | 27 May 2019 | OPTICS EXPRESS 15137

the middle of them. L1 and L2 were two plano-convex lenses with respective focal length of
50mm and 40mm and with both surface of them AR coated at 1064 nm, and they were used
to collimate and refocused the round-trip light. The distance between L1 and L2 was 40mm.
The OC was a plane mirror coated with 95% reflectivity at 1064nm, and it could be moved
along the resonator axis on a horizontal translation stage with a minimum step of 10μm. With
such setup, there formed two beam waists in the cavity, and first waist was located in between
HR mirror and L1 and identical to the position of the laser crystal, while the second waist was
exactly on the reflectance surface of OC. In this way, a conical beam was formed between L2
and OC in the resonator. The pump light from a fiber (400μm) coupled laser diode (λ = 808
nm) was focused by a coupler (1:1) in the sample along the resonator axis. The converging
pump light passed through HR mirror into Nd:YAG and formed a spot of about rP = 300μm
(rP is the focal spot radial of pump beam in the crystal), and formed the end-pumped
structure.
An optically uniaxial c-cut YVO4 crystal was placed behind L2 as the polarization
discriminator in this cavity. It had 8 × 8 mm cross section and 20 mm length with both
surface of it AR coated at 1064 nm. The YVO4 crystal has positive birefringence, and the
refractive indices for ordinary and extraordinary rays (e-ray and o-ray) are no = 1.9573 and ne
= 2.1652 at 1.064 nm, respectively. When the beam passing the birefringent crystal is
diverging or converging, the e-ray and o-ray will take different paths because of the different
refractive indices. The forward conical beam coming from L2 side is separated into the e- and
o-ray components and then they would converge at different points along the cavity axis.
Because the e-ray will be largely refracted at the crystal surfaces compared with the o-ray, as
shown in Fig. 1, the limit of the stable cavity length for the e-ray becomes longer than that for
the o-ray. Thus, a cavity length range (that is the OC’s position) in which the e-ray is stable
but the o-ray is unstable will be generated, or visa versa.

Fig. 1. Schematic of experimental setups for the azimuthally or radially polarized Nd:YAG
laser.

3. Results and discussion

According to Fig. 1, the OC’s position is determined by following experimental steps. At a
position, only one of o- and e-ray could be retro-reflected into resonator with minimum
round-trip loss, and therefore it is expected that a desired vector mode can be excited. So
when the OC was positioned near the theoretical (estimated) converging (focal) point of o-
ray, the laser began to oscillate in doughnut-shaped mode within the pumping level above the
lasing threshold. Then we gradually moved the OC away from its initial position along the
resonator axis. Figure 2 shows far-field intensity distributions when the cavity length was
gradually increased which were obtained. As shown, in two regions the annular intensity
distributions with central null were clearly discerned. For one of these two regions the OC
was closer to YVO4, for the other the OC was shifted further from YVO4. Both regions will
be referred conventionally as the ‘near region’ and ‘far region’, respectively. In these two
 Vol. 27, No. 11 | 27 May 2019 | OPTICS EXPRESS 15138

regions, the doughnuts remained stable. This result is consistent with the above theoretical
analysis. That is to say, as Fig. 1, the doughnut mode obtained in the ‘near region’ is formed
by the o-ray, and the doughnut mode obtained in the ‘far region’ is formed by the e-ray.

Fig. 2. Variation of intensity distributions of laser beams at different cavity length.

Further, the polarization states of the doughnut-shaped laser modes in two regions were
checked by recording the intensity distribution through a linear polarizer analyzer under
different orientations. Figures 3(a) and 3(b) depict the far- and near-field full beam profiles.
Figures 3(c)–3(f) show the corresponding far-field intensity distribution of laser beam after
the polarizer when the polarizer was rotated at different orientations. As seen, in the “near
region” the symmetric two-lobe patterns were always perpendicular to the respective
polarizer axis, and this phenomenon manifested that the doughnut-shaped laser beam was AP.
In the “far region” the symmetric two-lobe patterns were always parallel to the respective
polarizer axis, and this phenomenon manifested that the doughnut-shaped laser beam was RP.
It means that by simple adjusting the OC’s position (cavity length) we obtained AP beam at
short L and RP beam at long L with YVO4 in this Nd:YAG laser.

Fig. 3. In both near and far region, (a) far- and (b) near-field intensity distribution of the full
beam profile; (c–f) Intensity profiles of far-field laser beam transmitted through the polarizer
analyzer. The black arrows direction indicate the respective orientations of the polarizer
analyzer’s axis.

When the laser began to oscillate in the “near region”, the cavity was optimized to
maximize the output power at the threshold Pabs = 4.29W. As a result, the optimum position
of OC was fixed to that corresponding to a cavity length of L = 178.7 mm. The laser power
always increased linearly with Pabs above threshold pump power. But we found that the
doughnut mode was not always maintained as the pump power increased. Figure 4 depicts the
captured total intensity distributions of laser beams at different Pabs. In this case, the series of
modes generated by the absorbed pump power Pabs increases from 4.29 W to 6.78W included
doughnut mode, admixture of mode and doughnut observed at the output in the order
mentioned. As shown, the absorbed pump power Pabs lower than 5.07 W the laser beam was a
doughnut AP beam. When Pabs exceeded 5.07 W, the doughnut mode pattern suddenly
changed to a multimode. Then Pabs increased continuously to 6.4 W, the laser mode suddenly
changed to a doughnut mode again. At this time the second doughnut beam was proved to be
RP beam. We are surprised to find that there were also two cavity mode changes (doughnut
mode change to another mode and then to doughnut mode again) only with pump power
increase from low to high; and the doughnut modes, in the doughnut mode appeared regions,
 Vol. 27, No. 11 | 27 May 2019 | OPTICS EXPRESS 15139

were proved to be AP (at low pump power region) and RP (at high pump power region),
respectively. All those doughnut modes remained stable. The experiment results show that in
this laser the laser mode can be converted between AP and RP only by changing the input
pump power.

Fig. 4. Far-field intensity distributions of laser beams at Pabs = 4.29W(a), 4.73W(b), 5.07W(c),
5.54W(d), 6W(e), 6.4W(f), 6.78W(g), respectively, at L = 179.8 mm.

According to experiment results of Fig. 4, we can make a preliminarily inference that at

other suitable cavity lengths there will also be laser mode conversion with the pump power
change. As is well known in a laser the conversion between two cavity modes is due to
changes in the stability conditions of two modes. In our experiment, there was no other reason
for mode conversion except the change of the input pump power. So this phenomenon of lase
mode transition was attributed to the variation of cavity configuration with thermal lensing
effect [15,16]. More detailed theoretical explanation for the mechanism is given in the
following section.
As we know, the temperature gradient in an end-pumped laser crystal due to an
inhomogeneous pumping (heating) produces thermal strain and a transverse gradient of
refractive indices. For a paraxial coherent beam propagating in the heated laser crystal,
thermal lens focus length (fth) for o-ray (AP beam) and e-ray (RP beam) is derived as [17]

KA  1 dn α r ( n − 1)  −1
fth =  + α Cr , a n03 + 0 0  (1)
P  2 dT l 
Where A is area of crystal, l is the length of crystal, r0 is the radial direction of crystal
along the cavity axis, P is availability conduce thermal in crystal, P = ηPabs, η is an efficiency
factor which relates the absorbed pump power to the power dissipated as heat in crystal.
According to Eq. (1), for Nd:YAG crystal we used the thermal conductivity K = 0.14 W/cm·
℃ , the thermal dispersion dn / dT = 7.3 ×10−6 / °C , coefficient of thermal expansion
α = 7.5 ×10−6 / °C , function of elasto-optical coefficient for radial or azimuthal Cr = 0.017 ,
Ca = −0.0025 , and index of refraction n0 = 1.82 [17]. A ray transfer matrix analysis [18] may
be applied for every resonator configuration. Such an analysis should permit finding the
region of resonator stability and mode radii at the Nd:YAG for every configuration with the
different pump power. In order to simplify the analysis we will initially eliminate the
thickness of the Nd:YAG disk and ignore aberrations of the intra-cavity lens. As well known,
the fundamental mode has the smallest beam radius in the resonator. The beam radius of each
mode increases with increasing mode number. However, the ratio of the radii of the higher
order mode to the fundamental mode remains unchanged in any plane inside or outside the
cavity, in both near and far fields. In other word, the radii of the higher order mode and
fundamental mode have the same features. So with the change of the pump power we
calculated the change of the waist radius on Nd:YAG and the stability criterion of the o- and
e-ray two higher order modes based on the corresponding formula of the fundamental mode.
The stability of laser resonators can be expressed by the stability criterion derived from the
transfer matrix of the resonator [17]. Figure 5 plots the corresponding stability criterion (solid
line) for both o- and e-ray as well as the mode radii (dotted line) as a function of incident
pump power, respectively.
As seen in Fig. 5, with the increase of pump power the thermal lensing effect changes the
stability conditions and the transvers mode sizes of the o- and e-ray components. At pump
 Vol. 27, No. 11 | 27 May 2019 | OPTICS EXPRESS 15140

power more than 4.3 W the resonator stability condition for o-ray is firstly satisfied (the blue
solid line), and with pump power increase the mode radii (the blue dotted line) rapidly
decreases and matches the pump beam waist radius rP. But the resonator stability condition of
e-ray does not satisfy (the red dotted line). Therefore the laser outputs only o-ray at pump
power lower than about 4.7 W. As the pump power continues to increase the resonator
stability condition of e-ray is starting to satisfy and the mode radii of e-ray (the red solid line)
decreases rapidly to match with pump beam rP with Pabs increase as well. While the stability
conditions and mode radii of o-ray still maintains well. At this time the resonator stability
conditions of both rays satisfy and their mode radius match rP simultaneously. So both rays
are outputted at the same time and form a complex pattern. When the pump power exceeds
6.2W, the resonator stability conditions of o-ray are not satisfy anymore, and the mode radii
of o-ray rapidly increases and does not match rP. While the stability conditions and mode
radii of the e-ray are still maintained well. Therefore, the laser outputted only e-ray at this
time. The result of the analysis clearly shows that the thermal lensing effect produced by
pump power caused the difference in the stability conditions and the transvers mode sizes of
these two components, therefore, the oscillation of the o-ray and e-ray can be obtained in
different pump power regions. This result is consistent with that above experiment. To the
best of our knowledge conversion between the radial and the azimuthal polarization in the
intra-cavity way laser by inputting different pump power, Fig. 4 is reported for the first time.
So if we can effectively control the thermal effect in the crystal and we can achieve higher
output power level of the two vector beams in a laser.

Fig. 5. Transverse sizes of both o- and e-ray in the laser crystal and their stability conditions as
the functions of pump power

In addition, from experiments we knew that the output power of the AP or RP was
affected by many factors. By carefully adjusting the maximum output of the AP and RP were
obtained at Pabs = 6.78 W. The mode stability of the AP and RP beam obtained in this
experiment was very high. For AP, the laser output power reached maximum 2.4 W with o-o
efficiency of 35.4%. For the sake of verifying the polarization degradation, the polarization
purities of corresponding AP laser beam was measured by using the similar method as
described in [19]. It showed an estimated value of 97.3% of the polarization degree. The M2
factor of this laser mode was measured to be nearly M2x = 2.36, M2y = 2.23. For RP, the laser
output power reached maximum 2.52 W with an o-o efficiency of 37.2%, the estimate value
of polarization degree was 95.8%, the M2 factor was measured to be nearly M2x = 2.43, M2y =
2.33.
 Vol. 27, No. 11 | 27 May 2019 | OPTICS EXPRESS 15141

4. Conclusions
In summary, the azimuthally and the radially polarized laser beams have been generated from
the output of a Nd:YAG laser by using a birefringent crystal c-cut YVO4. We can use a
simple way by regulating inputting pump power to easily implement the conversion between
the radially polarization and the azimuthal polarization in a laser. The oscillation was very
stable. This approach for generating azimuthally and radially polarized beams offers many
attractions over existing techniques and is well-suited to achieve azimuthally and radially
polarized beams in a laser for other wavelength. Such polarization switching way in a laser
was reproducible and would facilitate many applications. Endeavors to optimize the laser
parameters are in progress.
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (61475166).
References
1. Q. Zhan, “Trapping metallic Rayleigh particles with radial polarization,” Opt. Express 12(15), 3377–3382
(2004).
2. R. Dorn, S. Quabis, and G. Leuchs, “Sharper focus for a radially polarized light beam,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 91(23),
233901 (2003).
3. M. A. Ahmed, A. Voss, M. M. Vogel, A. Austerschulte, J. Schulz, V. Metsch, T. Moser, and T. Graf, “Radially
polarized high-powers lasers,” Proc. SPIE 7131, 71311I (2008).
4. V. G. Niziev and A. V. Nesterov, “Influence of beam polarization on laser cutting efficiency,” J. Phys. D Appl.
Phys. 32(13), 1455–1461 (1999).
5. W. Kimura, G. Kim, R. Romea, L. Steinhauer, I. Pogorelsky, K. Kusche, R. Fernow, X. Wang, and Y. Liu,
“Laser acceleration of relativistic electrons using the inverse Cherenkov effect,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 74(4), 546–549
(1995).
6. M. Meier, V. Romano, and T. Feurer, “Material processing with pulsed radially and azimuthally polarized laser
radiation,” Appl. Phys., A Mater. Sci. Process. 86(3), 329–334 (2007).
7. S. C. Tidwell, G. H. Kim, and W. D. Kimura, “Efficient radially polarized laser beam generation with a double
interferometer,” Appl. Opt. 32(27), 5222–5229 (1993).
8. M. Stalder and M. Schadt, “Linearly polarized light with axial symmetry generated by liquid-crystal polarization
converters,” Opt. Lett. 21(23), 1948–1950 (1996).
9. C. Maurer, A. Jesacher, S. Fürhapter, S. Bernet, and M. Ritsch-Marte, “Tailoring of arbitrary optical vector
beams,” New J. Phys. 9(3), 78–98 (2007).
10. V. G. Niziev, R. S. Chang, and A. V. Nesterov, “Generation of inhomogeneously polarized laser beams by use of
a Sagnac interferometer,” Appl. Opt. 45(33), 8393–8399 (2006).
11. R. Oron, S. Blit, N. Davidson, A. A. Friesem, Z. Bomzon, and E. Hasman, “The formation of laser beams with
pure azimuthal or radial polarization,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 77(21), 3322–3324 (2000).
12. T. Moser, M. A. Ahmed, F. Pigeon, O. Parriaux, E. Wyss, and T. Graf, “Generation of radially polarized beams
in Nd:YAG lasers with polarization selective mirrors,” Laser Phys. Lett. 1(5), 234–236 (2004).
13. M. A. Ahmed, A. Voss, M. M. Vogel, and T. Graf, “Multilayer polarizing grating mirror used for the generation
of radial polarization in Yb:YAG thin-disk lasers,” Opt. Lett. 32(22), 3272–3274 (2007).
14. I. Moshe, S. Jackel, A. Meir, Y. Lumer, and E. Leibush, “2 kW, M2 < 10 radially polarized beams from
aberration-compensated rod-based Nd:YAG lasers,” Opt. Lett. 32(1), 47–49 (2007).
15. N. Hodgson and H. Weber, Laser Resonator and Beam Propagation (Springer, 2005).
16. N. Barré, M. Romanelli, and M. Brunel, “Role of cavity degeneracy for high-order mode excitation in end-
pumped solid-state lasers,” Opt. Lett. 39(4), 1022–1025 (2014).
17. W. Koechner, Solid-State Laser Engineering (Springer Science, 2006).
18. N. Hodgson and H. Weber, Laser Resonators and Beam Propagation (Springer-Verlag, 2007).
19. J. L. Li, K. Ueda, L. X. Zhong, M. Musha, A. Shirakawa, and T. Sato, “Efficient excitations of radially and
azimuthally polarized Nd3+:YAG ceramic microchip laser by use of subwavelength multilayer concentric
gratings composed of Nb2O5/SiO2,” Opt. Express 16(14), 10841–10848 (2008).