Cryogenic Lasers

Definition: lasers where the gain medium is operated at cryogenic temperatures

The idea of operating lasers at low temperatures is not exactly new: the second laser in

history already was a cryogenic one [1]. While this concept was originally used just because

room-temperature operation was hard to achieve, a renewed interest in cryogenic operation

for high-power lasers and amplifiers developed in the 1990s.

In high-power laser sources, thermal effects such as depolarization loss, thermal lensing or

even fracture of the laser crystal can be a real problem limiting the performance. A number

of the detrimental thermal effects can be effectively suppressed by cryogenic cooling,

meaning cooling of the gain medium to low temperatures such as 77 K (the temperature of

liquid nitrogen) or even 4 K (liquid helium). The main effects of such cooling are:

• The thermal conductivity of the gain medium is strongly increased, mainly because

the mean free path length of phonons is increased. Therefore, temperature gradients

are strongly decreased. As an example, the thermal conductivity of YAG increases by

a factor of 7 when the temperature is reduced from 300 K to 77 K.

• The thermal expansion coefficient is also strongly reduced. This together with the

reduced temperature gradients reduces thermal lensing from bulging and stress, and

of course the tendency for stress fracture.

• The thermooptic coefficient (dn / dT) is also reduced, further reducing thermal

lensing.

• The laser and absorption cross sections of rare earth ions are increased, essentially

because thermally induced broadening is reduced. As a result, saturation powers are

reduced, and the laser gain is increased. Consequently, the threshold pump power is

reduced, and shorter pulses can be obtained in Q-switched operation. The slope

efficiency can be increased by increasing the output coupler transmission, so that

parasitic resonator losses become relatively less important.

• The thermal population of the lower laser level in quasi-three-level gain media is

reduced, which again reduces the threshold pump power and leads to laser
 designs with increased power efficiency [5]. For example, Yb:YAG for 1030-nm

emission behaves as a quasi-three-level system at room temperature, but as a four-

level system at 77 K. The same is true for Er:YAG lasers emitting at 1.6 μm.

• Depending on the gain medium, the strength of certain quenching processes may

be reduced.

The combination of these factors allows for strong improvements in laser performance. In

particular, cryogenically cooled lasers have the potential for generating much higher output

powers without excessive thermal effects, i.e. with good beam quality.

A possible concern is that the bandwidth of both the emission and absorption of the cryo-

cooled laser crystal may be reduced, which may lead to a narrower range for wavelength

tuning and to more stringent requirements on the linewidth and wavelength stability of the

pump laser. However, this effect does not necessarily occur.

Cryogenic cooling may be achieved with a cryogen such as liquid nitrogen or helium, ideally

circulating through channels in a cooling finger which is attached to the laser crystal. The

cryogen may be taken from some supply, which is refilled from time to time, or recycled in a

closed loop, containing e.g. a Stirling engine. To avoid condensation, one usually has to

operate the laser crystal in a vacuum chamber.

Of course, the concept of operating the laser crystal at a very low temperature can also be

applied to amplifiers. It is used e.g. to build regenerative amplifiers based

on Ti:sapphire with average output powers of tens of watts.

Although cryogenic cooling arrangements certainly add to the complexity of such a laser

system, more conventional cooling systems are also not always very simple, and the great

effectiveness of cryogenic cooling may allow for a reduction in complexity at other places.

VERY HIGH-PEAK-POWER LASERS: Cryogenic cooling multiplies output of

Ti:sapphire laser

The broad laser bandwidth and excellent material properties of titanium-doped sapphire

(Ti:sapphire) have proved ideal for small- and large-scale ultrafast lasers and systems.1

Incorporating cryogenic cooling into an ultrafast Ti:sapphire laser amplifier can reduce

thermal-lens-induced aberrations by more than two orders of magnitude, resulting in

additional performance improvements. Although not common in lasers, cryogenic cooling

makes ultrafast systems more versatile and is also surprisingly cost-effective for a variety of

applications (see Fig. 1).

Ti:sapphire amplifier systems are typically pumped by frequency-doubled Nd:YAG or Nd:YLF

lasers, and very high-average-power lasers of this type (approximately 100 W) have existed

for some time. Previous-generation Ti:sapphire systems were incapable of using these pump

lasers fully, however, because of thermal-load limitations. In a Ti:sapphire laser amplifier,

light from the pump laser is focused on the Ti:sapphire rod, and during amplification a

photon at approximately 532 nm, (2.33 eV) is absorbed by the Ti:sapphire and emitted as a

photon at approximately 800 nm (1.55 eV). The rest of the energy-roughly one-third of the

incident power-is converted into heat. With a 100-W pump laser focused into a submillimeter

spot, the heat load creates very strong temperature gradients that distort the optical

properties of the crystal, producing distortion of the amplified pulse. The distortion results

from the changing index of refraction of the sapphire with temperature, and the physical

expansion of the material, which causes a bowing of the output faces.

FIGURE 1. A cryogenically cooled Ti:sapphire laser amplifier crystal is pumped by a

frequency-doubled Nd:YLF laser. Click here to enlarge image

To a first approximation, the thermal loading corresponds to a variable-focal-length lens in

the optical system. Proper amplifier design can compensate for this lens to some extent, but

large optical aberrations remain. Hence, early-generation Ti:sapphire systems were limited

to about 1 W before thermal distortion became a serious problem. Potential applications

were also limited because thermal lensing limits the pulse repetition rate.

Many processes that were demonstrated first using low-repetition-rate systems-such as

ultrafast micromachining, coherent x-ray generation using high-order harmonics, or high-

energy particle generation-would become much more useful as tools for research or industry

if the repetition rate could be increased. Furthermore, state-of-the-art basic science

experiments require very high signal-to-noise ratios to find small signals buried in large

backgrounds. Higher repetition rates would allow higher signal-to-noise ratios.

Benefits of cryogenic cooling

The obvious solution to the thermal-lensing problem would be to find a better gain material,

but Ti:sapphire is tough to beat. Sapphire is second only to diamond as a thermally

conductive transparent material. And Ti:sapphire has a broader bandwidth than any other

gain material-ideal for ultrafast applications. So Ti:sapphire will likely be the material of

choice for high-performance ultrafast lasers for some time to come. Among numerous

techniques proposed to address thermal lensing, the most obvious has been to compensate

with corrective optics. This approach can improve the situation, but it also makes the system

ultrasensitive to pump-power fluctuations. Furthermore, it is not possible to compensate for

higher-order thermal-lens aberrations.

A very effective solution, although less familiar to laser users, is to aggressively cool the

laser crystal. It has been known for some time that cryogenic cooling of Ti:sapphire

improves its characteristics, but our group was the first to implement it in ultrafast systems

during the late 1990s. We first used cryogenic cooling for the “power amplifier” after the
preamplifier in an ultrafast system. Later we realized that the realbenefit of cryocooling is its

use in the regenerative or multipass amplifier itself, because this is the place where most of

the gain in a system occurs and where optical aberrations accumulate. Cryocooling

technology thus proved to be much more useful than originally anticipated, and was also

patented.2

FIGURE 2. Amplifier thermal-lens power is plotted as a function of pump power for a

Ti:sapphire crystal pumped with a typical 500-µm-diameter spot. At 25-W pump power, the

thermal lens corresponds to a 2.5-cm lens at room temperature, but to a larger than 1000-

cm lens at 77 K. At 100 W, the thermal lens is smaller than 1 cm at 300 K, but still several

meters at 77 K. Click here to enlarge image

The advantage of cryocooling is significant and the technology for implementing it is simple,

reliable, and cost-effective. Cooling a Ti:sapphire crystal to between 50 K and 80 K results in

a greater than 200× decrease in thermally induced distortions in the beam being amplified

(see Fig. 2).

There are two reasons for this dramatic improvement. First, the thermal conductivity of

sapphire increases by a factor of roughly 39 when the temperature is decreased from 300 K

to 77 K. Second, the change in index of refraction with temperature decreases by a factor of

7.3. These factors are multiplicative.

The dramatic reduction in lensing simplifies the amplifier configuration, because the

amplifier will now act as a nearly ideal gain medium, with very little optical aberration even

for very high pump power. This makes it possible to take advantage of very high-average-

power 532-nm Q-switched pump lasers-at least four different manufacturers make lasers in

the range of 100-W output, in diode-pumped or cost-effective lamp-pumped models. The

greater pump power can allow for either increased energy per pulse, or increased repetition

rate, depending on the pump laser.

FIGURE 3. In the Dragon ultrafast laser system, pulses are generated using a modelocked

Ti:sapphire laser that can generate sub-10-fs pulses of 100- to 150-nm bandwidth.

Cryogenic cooling is implemented using compressor technology similar to that used in

cryopumps. After pulse stretching and single-pulse selection, pulses are injected into a

simple multipass amplifier setup allowing for the generation of very short-duration 15- to 30-

fs pulses. After 8 to 13 passes in the amplifier, the pulse reaches saturation, is extracted,

and a telescope expands the beam to avoid thermal loading on the compressor

gratings. Click here to enlarge image

Another major benefit is an increase in the pump-to-output optical conversion efficiency-up

to 25% to 30%-before pulse compression losses. The improvement occurs even for

cryogenically cooled systems that use relatively modest (about 25 W) pump lasers and

makes cryogenic technology much more cost-effective than originally anticipated. The result

is a “no compromise” Ti:sapphire laser system that can generate pulses as short as 20 to 30

fs, with near-diffraction-limited focusability, and with significantly more output power. The

improved performance far outweighs the moderate increase in cost.

Implementation

Cryocooling technology has been implemented in our Dragon ultrafast amplifier system,

which was first introduced in 2002, and has since been used with a large variety of diode-

pumped and lamp-pumped pump lasers (see Fig. 3). We have implemented one-stage and

two-stage systems, the latter for high-single-pulse-energy applications. The single-stage

system can be pumped at up to 20-kHz repetition rate, and can deliver an average power of

up to 10 W (see Fig. 4).3 The uncompressed output power of 16 W results in a 20- to 30-fs

compressed output power of more than 10 W, with a pulse energy of more than 10 mJ at

1-kHz repetition rate.

FIGURE 4. The cryogenically cooled Dragon laser generates a pulse with duration of less

then 30 fs (left), and M2 of about 1.3 in the x and y axes, and total optical-to-optical

conversion efficiency of better than 25%, even when operating with nearly TEM00 mode

quality (right). Click here to enlarge image

The limits of cryogenically cooled amplifier technology are essentially the average power

limits of the pump lasers. The theoretical fracture limit-a power level at which the crystal

sustains physical damage-for end pumping of Ti:sapphire is about 1.2 kW per face, meaning

that it should be feasible to construct kilowatt-scale ultrafast lasers in the future.4 In the lab,

diode-pumped 532-nm laser modules have been demonstrated at powers of up to 300 W in

a very compact form factor.5 As new-generation pump lasers are introduced, ultrafast table-

top amplifier systems can be straightforwardly developed with output powers of tens to
hundreds of watts, at only modest increase in cost.

One critical area that requires improvement is in the pulse compression process. At high

average powers, the pulse compression gratings show thermal distortion. Creative

approaches can likely get around this problem, however. One approach would be to use

nonabsorptive dielectric compression gratings; another would be a concept we recently

demonstrated called downchirped pulse amplification (DPA), which turns the conventional

CPA process on its head. In DPA the pulse stretcher generates a negatively chirped pulse

rather than a positively chirped one.6 The pulse is then amplified, and recompressed using

positive material dispersion from a block of glass, which does not absorb any light or

experience thermal distortions.❏

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